At age four, an organism known as Haemophilus influenzae entrenched itself on the lining of my son's brain. “Meningitis,” a doctor in pediatric intensive care pronounced. I'd written about diseases much of my life as a journalist. God, I thought, an infection on the lining of the brain. Burning fever, edema, pressure on the brain, possible neurological deficits, leading to disability or death. My little son lay comatose, hooked to an intravenous line that fast-dripped antibiotics. I couldn't leave his side, of course. So I maintained my vigil for two days, unshaven and unbathed in a corner of his room. I allowed myself to leave finally when he popped awake and I was sure that he knew I had taken his then-cool hand for the road back.
On the day my daughter came for the shoe visit, my wife complained of a thickening, a tightening—that harbinger of terror for an asthmatic and her husband. She had promised to take my daughter shopping for shoes for an upcoming party, an occasion where my daughter's usual soiled hightop sneakers wouldn't do. This was not to be an East Village bash but a garden party on the greens of Connecticut, ruled by convention. Perhaps I was the real instigator of this shoe outing because I can remember grumbling one day, not quite under my breath and clearly within the range of my wife's hearing, “I didn't know the Mammy Yokum style had become so proletariat chic.” It was a loss of cool. As I've been bedeviled over the years by my own departures from convention, I've tried to maintain an even-headedness about my children's extravagances—colorful tattoos, recreational drugs, sudden school dropouts—but age, and maybe all that warding off of the Furies, had gotten me to react unkindly, without cool, to the footwear that I thought might keep my naturally graceful and beautiful daughter from universal adoration. Anyway, with my wife on the shelf, or at least near her nebulizer for the day, I agreed to go shoe-shopping, credit card in hand, as the parental stand-in. I took the task to mean I was to be encouraging if my daughter was unsure or couldn't quite make up her mind. In the end, we came away with four pairs, and the young saleswoman took my credit card with a naughty smirk and a revealing open-eyed look that said, What's this older guy doing with this pretty young thing in an antique oyster-shell dress covered by a United Auto Workers warmup jacket and hightop Keds? The saleswoman might have been surprised to know that my daughter, Esmé, teaches Russian literature two days a week at one of our big local universities and the rest of the time translates Slavic documents for a small company housed in a brownstone in the East 90's that shares space with a Buddhist study center.
To be sure, the moment the saleswoman stamped me as a sugar daddy and, therefore, my daughter as a gold digger, it stirred Oedipal concerns in me. Was it my body language? My in-store urging of her to take the extra pairs? Was it the way I took out my credit card? I didn't think I'd flourished it or pulled it out in such a way as to indicate I was the Man in this companion's life. And after all, the saleswoman had only looked at me funny, or so I thought. She didn't actually say anything. If she had known Esmé, my daughter's occupation wouldn't have surprised her because we had all spoken some Russian at home, since my grandparents made it impossible not to. Even my wife, with her Scottish-Irish genes, could hold a fumbling conversation in Mother Russia, our family's way of saying “talking the mother tongue."
For some reason my mind flashed again on my wife clinging to life that time, kept alive by the fortune of advanced medical technology. I wanted to rush home and see how she was doing with her asthma. I used my cell phone instead to tell her we had just bought four pairs of shoes, and to reassure myself that she hadn't been engulfed by the Furies. “Four?” she asked. “Why four?” I think I answered that I was trying to be encouraging.
"Klyovo! Khorosho!" she said, having reconsidered, I guess. My purchases for Esmé were now “Nifty! Cool!"
But had I told her the truth? Did I really buy our daughter four pairs of shoes? Or did I only imagine it was four?
Four is an unlucky number. I know that to the Chinese the number four warns of the coming of dragon fire. Any truly considerate dim-sum house carefully avoids providing four pieces to a serving. Aren't there four apocalyptic horsemen that roam the dark side of our unconscious? I weigh the threat of four in games of chance. Four is death, the Chinese say. Bad luck, anyway.
I still shudder when I think of it. As we were at the door to leave, two large men loomed. They were casually dressed: collared T-shirts, cotton slacks, windbreakers, clean sneakers. As it was a women's store, I fleetingly assumed they were there to join their own lady shoe buyers. The men pressed forward, pushing us back into the store. Now I saw the handles of guns in their shoulder holsters. A woman clerk approached, asking if she could help.
"Get on the floor,” one of them ordered, “facedown!"
"What are you talking abou—? Oh—” the salesclerk said, and got down. Maybe she too saw their weapons.
I had stepped in front of Esmé. Daddy had to shield his little girl from these two big blond robbers.
"You too. Down!” one snarled. Both glared at me.
Esmé whispered in Russian—ironically, I thought, and wondered why—Batya, shto sdelano mnoy dlya chelovechestva? She had wanted to know: Daddy, what contribution to humanity have I made today? I was puzzled, but not for long. She'd pushed me out of the way before the shots rang out. The two men were hit in the chest, and fell back, perhaps dead. The glass door was shattering, shards raining down, some standing upright in the carpet. The noise was terrifying. Esmé's backpack had been ripped open by her own firepower. She pulled her gun out, tossed her backpack aside.
Wait! My little baby ... a gun? Shooting? Killing?
"Daddy, call the cops!” she said. “And stay down!"
Stay down? I was about to pass out. Once during a romantic crisis of hers, she was so sad and blue I told her she'd get over it in time, that I loved her with all my heart and soul, that even if they came to me with ironclad proof that she was a serial killer, I would still love her. She was my baby, my little girl. Now I wondered if I would be asked to prove it under those givens.
"They're bad people—thugs, gangsters, murderers,” Esmé said, “and there are two more outside, behind parked cars, just in front."
I called 911, told the operator there'd been a shooting, gave the address.
The operator wanted to know when.
"Now! Right this minute!"
I wondered if the emergency operator heard the bullets blasting into the store, through the remaining windows. Or the chilling hail of glass.
Police sirens sounded. The men behind the cars started to move. Esmé dropped one of them. The cops corralled the other. Now the police were taking defensive positions against us—rather, against Esmé.
"FBI!” she yelled. “FBI!” She tossed her gun out. Then she followed with her hands up.
FBI? My little Esmé? She's not even thirty years old. When would she have joined the Bureau? Where would she have trained? It's true she had her own apartment. We didn't have our eye on her minute by minute. But we'd always talked on the phone. She came to most family birthday celebrations in restaurants around town, sometimes dragging that beau of hers, the one who jumped out of the window, figuratively, that is. Anyone who would leave my beautiful daughter must have had suicidal thoughts. So where and when did she train to be a Fed? Where are recruits trained—in Virginia, like the CIA? Through her late teens and early twenties she'd marched, maintained vigils with other concerned citizens against the injustices of government and politicians local and federal. Was she undercover then too? When had she become a federal agent? Was that why her beau had left? He didn't want to be with a federal agent?
I got up with loose splintered glass shards falling from my back, raised my arms, and joined my daughter outside. The cops ordered me to “Drop it!"
Drop it? Drop what? Then I realized I was still holding the plastic bag with the four shoeboxes. I put them on the sidewalk. When I stood, Esmé told me, “They were Russian mafia ... assassins."
"Who?"
"The dead."
I wondered how long my little baby had been killing Russian assassins. I felt like someone under a volcano, unable to stay in one place, constantly ducking molten lava. I was depressed. I saw my little girl ducking the lava, too.
"Mostly, Daddy, I just listen in on their conversations, and translate them."
Now, of course, more assassins would come after her. Esmé would undoubtedly be sent elsewhere, another state, under a new name, some protective scheme for “made” agents. Would she teach Russian literature in Madison, Wisconsin, or Tucson, Arizona?
* * * *
I got home hours later, though I must say the Feds came quickly to sort out the disbelieving police. I had called my wife from the station house to say Esmé and I had decided to have a drink and a light early supper. She was pleased. “Father and daughter. Sweet.” It didn't matter that we never dined or drank.
When I got home, my wife thought I looked tired. I was going to say, “Don't ask.” But I caught myself, and said, “Too much shoe shopping, but in an odd way stimulating and exhausting."
"Did she have a date? Was she seeing someone after your dinner?” my wife asked.
"I don't know,” I said. “Why are you asking?"
"Because you're still carrying the shoes."
* * * *
After listening to my lamentations, you'll not believe this: I now think of myself as one of the fortunate. Things are looking up. My grandfather used to say, “Don't worry. We're protected by St. Zosima and St. Laur.” I learned much later that those saints were the guardians of bees and horses. But they must also have been the ones guarding us against those Russian assassins. Somewhere along the road the Fates must have decided to protect us. My wife's doing fine, my handsome son grown so lithe, and my newly shod daughter—(Oh, she got reassigned. Maybe they've got her listening in on the Russian Prime Minister)—I can't say where she is, but the shoes did follow her. Whether she ever wears them, I never ask. We all hope she's had pleasant occasion for using them all—the dress shoes, the two sporty pairs, and, of course, the sandals. For all I know the feds have fitted her for boots—with secret compartments for a knife, mace, or a stun gun. But at least we're all still around, even if hot from the breath of the dragon.
(c)2007 by Norman Keifetz
[Back to Table of Contents]
MAKIN’ UP AND BREAKIN’ UP by Jeremiah Healy
Creator of the John Francis Cuddy P.I. series and (under the pseudonym Terry Devane) the Mairead O'Clare legal-thriller series, Jeremiah Healy came to crime writing after a career as a law professor. His novels and short stories are recognized as among the finest in the genre. This one stars P.I. and former tennis pro Rory Calhoun.
Art by Mark Evans
* * * *
"Basically, Rory, country-and-western music today is just rap for rednecks."
The man sitting across from me on the new black wrought-iron furniture gracing the Lauderdale Tennis Club patio ought to know. Kel Tiptree told me he'd been in the business for over thirty years, longer than my entire lifespan. When he'd arrived and we shook hands, I pegged him a few inches taller than my six-one, though his cowboy boots’ heels probably helped a little. He was dressed in black jeans and a loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt, his build kind of rawboned under it. The shirt was white, a good precaution against South Florida's blistering June sunshine. And his Stetson hat threw a shadow around his face and throat, also protecting his neck and ears from the harmful rays.
As a former pro tennis player, though, I prefer polo shirts, elastic-waistband shorts, and sunscreen.
I said, “You told me on the telephone that one of the Fort Lauderdale detectives sugges-ted I might be able to help you with a problem?"
"I hope so, Rory.” Tiptree glanced around us, but everybody else was indoors, or on the far and shady side of the tiki bar, or using the swimming pool to cool off. “The police told me Marcy wasn't a missing person just yet, account of she'd been gone for only about twelve hours. Or fourteen, to right now. So I asked them if a private eye might could do the job."
It being a little after ten on that Wednesday morning, I did the math. “So, missing since eight o'clock last night?"
A nod, the brim of his hat throwing the shade to his belt buckle. “That's when Larry last saw her, anyways."
I had a pad and pen on the table next to me. “Could I get full names? And where they fit in?"
Another nod. “Marcy's short for ‘Marsha,’ spelled S-H-A at the end. Marcy Pickens, my backup singer. Larry's ‘Lawrence Bornstein,’ my road manager."
I wrote that information down. “So, you're on tour now?"
That seemed to stop him for a second. “Larry told me he'd booked advertising for the band all over this area."
"And he may have. I like listening to Reba McEntire and Martina McBride, Toby Keith and Keith Urban from time to time, but I'm not an avid fan of your kind of music."
Tiptree snorted. “Rory, my ‘kind’ of music isn't what you hear get played on the radio stations call themselves ‘country.’ In rock, or rhythm and blues, the older performers are able to cut new albums. Not in country, though. Heck, there aren't but two or three of us over fifty can get a contract anymore. All the record companies want are young guys and gals. There's even a singer who keeps his hat on all the time, afraid that the public won't want to hear him if they see he's bald on top."
Tiptree took off his Stetson, showing a meadow of wavy white hanks plastered by the sweatband into curls like Julius Caesar's.
"Even though I've still got hair, at fifty-four years and counting, I'm too old, Rory, and my music doesn't sound the way the record executives like. I do cowboy, bluegrass, and classic country. You think after the soundtrack from that movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? sold seven million copies, the companies'd come to their senses, experiment a little by bringing back the good stuff. But no."
I was having trouble seeing where this fit into his problem. “Mr. Tiptree—"
"Call me Kel, please. Especially since I can still recollect the actor with the same name as yours."
It's “Calhoun,” folks. My mother had a killer crush on Rory Calhoun from his cowboy roles, and when she found a marrying man with that surname, my fate was sealed.
"Kel, any reason you can think of why Ms. Pickens would want to..."
"What, run away?"
"Or disappear?"
Sturdy shake of the head. “No. None. Oh, she wasn't all that keen on coming down for this South Florida part of the tour.” Tiptree waved his hand toward the sky. “Said it was the beginning of hurricane season and hotter than blazes."
There are times when you hear some words—or their absence—louder than others. “Are you or Ms. Pickens from here?"
"No. I'm a Texan, and Marcy told me she was born on a farm in North Carolina.” Now Tiptree canted his head. “Why?"
"Most people who weren't born in Florida—or at least never lived here—say 'the hurricane season.’”
Tiptree seemed to weigh that. “Well now, Rory, I'm pretty good on remembering words, account of writing and singing lyrics. No, she definitely said just ‘hurricane season.’”
I wrote the phrase down next to her name. “If you're on tour, Kel, do you have a band traveling with you?"
"Just a fiddler. Can't really afford no entourage on what comes through the gate, so I play lead guitar, with Larry picking up bass players and drummers along the way."
"Any of the pickup people from here met Ms. Pickens as yet?"
"No. We finished up last weekend in Augusta—Georgia—on Sunday, then the four of us kind of dawdled our way down here in the RV. Larry's got some guys lined up for us, but we won't be meeting them until tonight for the sound check before our gig."
The four of us. “So, your fiddler is...?"
"Oh, right. Young kid name of Washington, Earl. And before you ask, yeah, he's black, leastways his momma was. But he's as into our music as I am. You should hear his riff on my signature song, ‘You Can't Change a Cheatin’ Hea
rt.’”
I vaguely recognized the title. “Kel, if Ms. Pickens is still missing through tonight, can you replace her in the band?"
A wave of sadness broke across the leathery features. “In the band, yes. In my life, no."
"You and she are a couple, then?"
"Coming up on a year now. And Rory, I don't know what your experience has been, but let me give you the short version of mine. I've gone through three wives and Lord knows how many girlfriends, from all the one-nighters to some real relationships. I was a drinker for a long time, and I nearly beat a guy to death with my bare hands for disrespecting my first wife in a bar. Since we weren't in Texas then, I did four years at hard labor for that one, but it didn't cure my temper. I've wasted most of my life and fortune, but I've got two good things left to me: the music, and Marcy. And if I had to rank them for you, she'd finish first."
I nodded.
Tiptree looked away for a moment, but this time less like he was checking for eavesdroppers. “There's another thing, too."
"Being?"
He came back to me. “Like I said, we travel in an RV. Well, you kind of need some protection, the places you park at all hours of the day or night."
Uh-oh. “A firearm?"
"Two. A revolver and a shotgun."
"And?"
"And when I realized Marcy was missing, I went to get the revolver, figuring ... well, I'm not sure what I figured. But it was gone, too."
"The handgun, but not the shotgun."
EQMM, August 2007 Page 15