Murder My Past

by Delia C. Pitts

  “Where’re we going, Norment?”

  “You’ll see. Keep your eyes peeled.”

  Our journey was short. At the opposite corner we passed Zarita’s bar, a favorite hang-out I’d skipped since Annie’s death. At first, I thought my boss wanted to treat me to a therapeutic round of brown liquor in my preferred den. But he led me past the saloon. We stopped at the next entrance, a doorframe shuttered with crude boards. Remnants of advertising posters fluttered where glass used to be. Norment bent a plywood square next to the knob, reached inside, and fiddled until the door yielded. We stepped inside. The foyer was narrow; I stretched my arms full-length and touched the walls on either side. A steep staircase rose from the penny tile floor of the vestibule.

  “This used to be old Doc Rogers’s office. Best dentist in the neighborhood.” Norment swept his hand upward like a steward on a cruise ship. “Second floor. Watch where you step. Some of the slats are missing.”

  “You know this place?”

  “Sure, anybody with teeth in their head knew Doc Rogers, back in the day.” He continued speaking, the voice drifting and spurting as we trudged up the stairs. “I had a tooth ache like you wouldn’t believe. I thought about just pulling out the damned tooth myself. You know, tie a string around it, attach the other end to a door knob, rear back and slam that sucker shut so hard it pulls out the tooth, root and all.”

  We reached the second-floor landing. Norment paused like a Shakespearean actor, casting dark glowing eyes my way to see if his story had me hooked.

  “I’d watched my old daddy do it when I was a little snapper. I’ll never forget seeing that bloody tooth hanging off the string on the bedroom door, while he hopped around on one foot, howling like a banshee. I thought I could do it. I was bound and determined to do it. I even bought some string and tied a knot around my poor screaming tooth.”

  To show the technique, Norment rattled the knob of the door facing us. After two seconds of twisting, it clattered to the floor leaving a hole in the frame. We pushed into the office suite. An old fire had damaged every surface in the space. Plumes of smoke, dust, and rot rose around our shoes. The place smelled of cinders, burnt leather and decayed animal guts. I coughed and squeezed my nose; Norment smiled at the familiar surroundings.

  “But when it came right down to it, I was a coward, Rook. Not even half the man my daddy was. I just couldn’t pull the trigger. Couldn’t bite the bullet. Couldn’t slam that door.”

  He stroked his fingers through the dust-clogged air, then turned a full circle. “So, I went to the dentist office like the tame little city critter I’d become. To this office right here.” The waiting room was almost empty, only a three-legged green vinyl sofa and a steel coat rack remained. Both were tattooed with fire’s black marks.

  “I rolled in one fine day, my jaw swoled out to there.” Norment curved his hand in an arc from chin to shoulder to illustrate the monstrous swelling. He pointed to the far wall, where a five-foot opening was topped by an arch to the ceiling. Beyond the grimy metal counter was another room with three abandoned work stations. Mounds of ash decorated the center of each metal desk. Feathery streaks of soot climbed the wall; flames had eaten gaps in the plasterboard, exposing charred insulation and blackened lumber.

  “And what did I see behind that reception counter, but the prettiest, freshest, finest little thing you’d ever hope to find. ‘Jayla Dream’ was written on the plastic name card stuck on her pink uniform. But what I read was, ‘Norment’s Wife.’ I knew it from the first second, clear as day. This girl had to be mine.”

  He stopped to fan dust motes drifting in front of his eyes. I moved to the lame sofa, which tottered under my weight as I sat. “So, Jayla Dream was a dream, hunh, Norment?”

  “Oh, no, sir. She wasn’t no dream, not on your life. That girl was real, solid, indisputable, actual and factual. I asked her out on a date right then, before I even climbed into the dentist’s chair. She said no, of course. Turned me down flat. Who’d want dinner with a man with half his face blown clear past his shoulder?”

  Norment waved me toward a door to the right of the arched wall. It was hanging by a single hinge, so we ducked as we passed. We walked down a hall; I wasn’t sure of the strength of the charred linoleum tiles below our feet, so I stepped in the spots Norment did. We passed two closed doors and then slipped into an examination room. A mint-green reclining chair lounged next to a gaping circular hole in the floor. The chair’s guts exploded from its cushion in a black spray of stuffing. A water standpipe and dead cables sprouted where a dentist’s sink and power equipment had once stood. Ghostly images of drills, high voltage lights, suction tubes, spit cups, aluminum instrument trays, and bloody gauze made me shiver. Pale sunbeams filtered through the grease and dirt on a window beyond the chair.

  My escort laughed. “Doc Rogers jerked that blasted tooth with one lurch.” Norment wiped his white-flecked goatee, then laughed some more. “Packed me off in twenty minutes with four aspirin and a bill the size of Brooklyn. Dreamie didn’t even say good-by when I left.”

  If he could smile, I would too. “No date. But at least the tooth was gone.”

  “True. But I came back the next week. And the next week. And the week after that. I had to pay my bill to Doc Rodgers. That was my excuse for the visits. But I kept paying in smaller and smaller amounts each time so I’d have a reason to come see Dreamie. If she hadn’t broke down and agreed to go to dinner with me, I might still be paying off that dentist bill to this day.”

  His bald head shone like an incandescent bulb. His joy at telling this story was so infectious, I chuckled too. Norment pulled a giant white handkerchief from his back pocket. He rubbed the seat and arm rests of the green chair, wiping around clumps of singed stuffing. He dragged a finger across the crackled cushion to be sure it was clean, then sat.

  I leaned against the fire-ravaged wall, caught in the web of ancient history. “But you closed the deal, didn’t you?”

  The tale of Jayla Dream unfolded. “You know I did. She was so beautiful, you won’t believe me when I tell you. You can see a lot of it in Sabrina, she’s got her mother’s face and sassy spirit, that’s for sure. But Dreamie was something special: short, fair-skinned, apple-bottomed, with big almond-shaped eyes and a smile to snatch your breath away.”

  He closed his eyes and inhaled a giant gust. “I loved the way that woman smelled. Like a warm deep forest of spices and flowers.” He rolled the words over his tongue, tasting the joy of those first months with Dreamie. “Courting, dating, hooking up, whatever you want to call it. We got there fast. So fast in fact, if you count the days with a fine-tuned calculator, you’ll figure out Brina was born five months after we got married.” His laughter rumbled across the room, sexy and bold, a warm wave of pride curling around me.

  I wanted more about Brina. I rotated a finger to encourage him. Norment, being Norment, didn’t need the boost. A few nods, hums, and whistles of approval were enough to prime his storytelling pump.

  “When Brina was born, Dreamie quit her job at the dentist office. I thought she’d go back after a while, but she never did. Said she wanted to strike out on her own, see what she could do with her artistic side. She loved to draw, sketch, water colors too. She’d go to the park with little Brina in a stroller and sketch the birds she saw. Robins, finches, jays, even pigeons looked special when she’d finished with ‘em.”

  Norment stretched in the chair to rummage in his wallet. Maybe he carried one of Dreamie’s bird sketches. Instead, he drew out a small photo. I crossed the room to study the photo cradled in his palm. It was a faded portrait of the family triangle: Norment in a green open-collar shirt grinning behind Dreamie who squeezed little Sabrina. The young mother wore a canary sweater dotted with fluffy white clouds. Her jeans were gathered with a braided leather belt. Her squirmy toddler was swamped in matching yellow corduroy overalls. Norment’s huge hands pressed on his wife’s
shoulders. He stooped to put his head at the same level as hers. I picked up the brittle slip of paper to study it. They looked ordinary, innocent, happy.

  When I returned the photo, Norment resumed his story. “Dreamie tried selling some of her drawings. She set a folding table on the boulevard, laid out her sketches, and sold a few. People liked how she captured those common critters in uncommon ways.” He looked toward the dirt-streaked window, as if searching for the animals captured in Dreamie’s art.

  “She wasn’t bringing in much money, and I wasn’t either in those early days. Starting up a private investigation business is damn tough at the outset. Folks don’t know you, don’t trust you, won’t give you their honest earned money to look after their property or their troubles. I expected it would be rough going. But Dreamie took it hard.”

  He wiped his mouth and nose with the handkerchief, rubbing at the long-ago embarrassment. “It wasn’t like she wanted to spend and spend. But she wanted things, nice things, like most women do. I couldn’t hardly rub two nickels together and her bird pictures only brought in a few pennies. We fought and scratched and argued so much, it just scoured the polish right off our marriage. Dulled its shine. Til there wasn’t nothing left but the raw and the rough.”

  Norment’s voice dwindled to nothing, as if remembering made each breath painful. “Dreamie drank a little, I drank a little too. And she tasted the other stuff, which I never did. She went in for coke mostly. I knew it was a terrible cycle: we’d argue about the dope; she’d go out and get some more. Then we’d argue some more, then she’d get strung out again. Some weeks after a fight, she’d take off and leave us for a day and a night. I never knew where she went. Just figured she hung on a street corner or in a park ‘til she got straight enough to come home.”

  The flowing words shuddered to a halt, as if memory squeezed them into little pebbles that blocked his mouth. He jerked his eyes to meet mine and started again.

  “Once she went missing for three whole days. She got clean after that. Not completely straight, but not strung out neither. Never disappeared for a long stretch like that again. A little girl needs her mother. Dreamie knew that; knew she shouldn’t take off and leave Sabrina like that.”

  This was the hard part of the story. Over the years I’d known them, I’d heard bits of it from Brina and from Norment too. So, I let him advance at his own pace through these jagged shards of the life Dreamie had shattered almost three decades ago. His words crept slow and dense, with a mournful tempo that dropped night’s black canvas over the dentist’s office.

  “One day, we argued pretty fierce, worse than before. When I came home, I found Brina crying in her room, her soft little cheek red from where Dreamie had hit her. Not hard, not rough. But still a slap no mother ought never give her child. I asked Brina what it was about. But all I could get from her was some story about a silver fish and some earrings.”

  I’d seen the beautiful silver fish earrings and heard Brina’s side of the story. It was a baffling moment which still festered in her imagination. What I’d learned didn’t alter his story, so I kept quiet.

  The past, jumbled and treacherous, carried Norment on. “When I asked Dreamie what happened, she couldn’t say anything clear neither. The whole story was a muddle. But I didn’t care what the fight was about. I told Dreamie she would never hit our daughter again. Not as long as I drew breath would she ever hit my baby girl again.” Norment stopped. His lips flattened over the phrase. I held my breath until he continued.

  “Things returned to normal then. Off-kilter, but normal the way we knew it. A few weeks later, Dreamie walked out the apartment one evening. Walked out into the dark and the rain. I never saw her again. She took off, never said a word, never left an address, or tried to get in touch. Nothing at all. Just abandoned us.”

  The rawness of this long-ago moment clawed at us. Norment dabbed a pinkie to the corner of each eye. He sniffed through reddened nostrils.

  To save him from picking at the sore spot once again, I took up his story. “You said you looked for Dreamie. Looked all over the city, then the state. Police missing-person reports, friends and neighbors, private contacts and clients, even some of your former pals in the mob.”

  Norment nodded his heavy head and blinked twice. Permission granted, I continued. “You enlisted everyone in the search, but nothing turned up. You did everything you could, Norment. You know it. I know it. Most important, Sabrina knows it. She knows you tried your damnedest. Dreamie’s gone. Just vanished and that’s all there is to it.”

  The old man plucked at frayed stitching on the arm of the dental chair. “Yeah. She’s lost because she didn’t want to be found. That’s how I figure it. At first, the cops grilled me. Suspected me of foul play in the disappearance. But after a while, the plain truth settled over all of us. Dreamie quit us and made a life for herself somewhere else. She didn’t want to be found. Not by me. Not by Sabrina. Not by anybody around here. I’ve made peace with the past. Took me a while, but I did it. I just hope Sabrina has too.”

  “Norment, I think she has. She’s come to that peace too.” I was nowhere near as positive as I sounded. But I wanted it to be true. The disappearance of Dreamie was a mystery we couldn’t solve here. But I had a simpler question. “What happened to the dentist?”

  “Doc Rogers? Office fire. Took him and his files with it. That was over twenty years ago. Nobody wanted to rent the space since. Fools claimed there was ghosts haunting the rooms.” Norment turned his head in a deliberate arc. As he rose from the chair, he slapped his palms together to erase the dust. “Best dentist in the neighborhood. Never been none like him since.”

  At the top of the steps, we peered into the black stairwell. I moved in front of the old man, firing the flashlight on my cell phone. Dust, like smoldering pink fumes, circled through the beam of light over the stairs below. Norment clapped his hand on my left shoulder, long fingers digging under my collar bone. We descended to the entrance that way, me leading, Norment following.

  In the vestibule, we stopped before the outer door. We stood for a minute, shoulder to shoulder. Darkness hid our faces and carried our voices.

  “Which tooth was it, Norment?”

  “The one got pulled? Lower right molar, in the back.”

  “You come here often?”

  “I get that old twinge in my jaw every three, four months. Throbbing like that ghost tooth still aching to be jerked out. The past is like a hot pulse beating some secret rhythm in my head. When it hits, I stop here for a tune up. Rest in the dentist chair a while. Think on the past, on the missing and the lost. After a while, the pain retreats and I get to work again. Rook, that ache don’t never disappear altogether. Don’t figure it ever will. But I can handle it now. You will too. After a while.”

  “Thank you.” I raised my chin, though he couldn’t see the gesture in the dark. “For bringing me here. For sharing your past. For sharing Dreamie.” Maybe he could feel the ruffle of air as I exhaled. “It helps.”

  Chapter

  Nine

  The next day, I took the train to mid-town. Sweaty subway commuters griped and shoved, but even their grousing couldn’t push the Continental Regent out of my brain. Maybe another morning scouring the halls, alcoves, and meeting rooms of the giant hotel would bring some new insight into Annie’s murder. Or at least lift the fog clogging my senses.

  After a trudge along the hushed corridors of the eighteenth floor, I tackled the grand meeting rooms on the second floor. They were crammed with a fresh set of convention-goers. Giddy with the freedom of new contacts in a strange city, these visitors congratulated themselves on their good fortune. Lots of back slapping, cheek kissing, and shoulder clutching lubricated the festive crowd. They didn’t look different from the people who’d attended Annie’s conference of entrepreneurs a week ago; maybe it was my jaded eye that made them seem so unwholesome.

  I hit the escalato
r in search of the hotel manager’s office. I wanted to pick his memory to prime my own. When I reached the foot of the stairs, I spotted Brock Stevens, crouched over a computer behind the maroon marble counter. He was jabbing at the monitor screen, giving instructions to a girl with long shiny hair and a tight red suit. I dodged heavy foot traffic to cross the lobby.

  Stevens recognized me before I leaned against the counter. His eyes wobbled toward the ceiling, then settled on my face. “Mr. Rook, I was… I wondered… well, I’m glad to see you again.” I doubted that was true. But his hospitality training won out over more ghoulish instincts.

  “Just thought I’d make another pass through. See if I’d missed anything.” I hadn’t invented an excuse for my visit, so the gulp of anguish in my voice was real. I scratched an index finger through a tangle above my left ear and shifted from side to side, studying the maroon-and-gray swirls in the carpet.

  I wanted him to invite me to his office, but Stevens took pity on me. “Could I entice you to join me for a cup of coffee, Mr. Rook?” Or maybe he didn’t want to be caught alone in a small office with me.

  “Sure, I could go for that.”

  “Arlene, I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Chuck can help you sort out that glitch in Mrs. Rosenblum’s reservation.”

  By the time we’d eased into a wide booth in the shop off the main lobby and ordered black coffees, my stomach had settled. Stevens used a soft voice, the chirpy one he might deploy in a nursery school. Or with unhappy customers. He wanted to soothe me, defuse any leftover anger. Maybe he feared I’d lodge a law suit against the hotel for wrongful death. Did he think I could claim millions in a gaudy court case pitting a grieving relative against a heartless corporation? Stevens wanted me calmed and comforted. I wanted something too. Information that might give new insights into the hours before Annie died. When the two white mugs of brew arrived, I steered from the mushy chit-chat.