Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” she asked, and he shook his head. She made a face. “You’ll wonder all night who it was.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Each ring seemed to sting her. “It might be for me. They know I’m here.”

  “They always know, don’t they? Which one is it this time?”

  “Chandler,” she said.

  He lifted the receiver and spoke. She was right, it was Chandler Gates, the sixty-year-old grandson of the firm’s cofounder and the one to whom she owed the most gratitude. Cole knew the voice, sugar on the tongue, from past calls, knew the vulpine face behind it from pictures in the Boston papers. “Here,” he said, dangling the receiver.

  A breeze was blowing in, and he stepped directly into its path. She talked with her back to him, her voice cool and assured, and she turned and whispered, “It’s about the libel.” He half believed her, perhaps more than half. She placed her back to him again and said, “Yes, Chandler, I’m listening.”

  He made his way to the sun room. The real estate agent, a fashionable woman with the air of a prima donna, had alternately called it a sun room and a plant room. At the time it had been full of both ingredients, dazzling his wife. He sank into a wicker chair with the wish that he had poured himself another Harvey’s. Insect sounds swirled through the screens. From time to time he rubbed the raw edge of his jaw where he had shaved too close that morning.

  “It really was business,” she said, and he felt his senses reach out. She stood just inside the rounded doorway with her face shaded in the diminishing light. “The Globe is hanging tough on us.”

  “That shouldn’t bother you,” he said.

  “It doesn’t. A settlement would flatten the fee, a trial could swell it.”

  “And give you a chance to shine. Do you have a good case?”

  “Depends upon the purity of my client.” She scratched a knee. “Did you know I once interned at the Globe for three months?”

  “No, you never mentioned it.”

  “Summer job. I worked with the court reporter. That’s when Tom Winship was editor. The women in the newsroom called him Windshit, not to his face.”

  Her shaded smile was ambiguous, and one of her hands was loosely clenched. He knew he was being prepared for something and waited with patience, his eye stretching out to an apple tree where the last of the sun was burning between the leaves.

  “Barney, I have to go.”

  “I thought that might be the case.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  She opened her fist, leaned forward, and carefully tossed something into his lap. He retrieved it from between his knees. It was a condom.

  “Do you have time?” he asked.

  “I’ll make time,” she said.

  • • •

  It was late in the evening. He switched off the late news and rang up the police station in Lawrence. “Captain Ryan there?”

  “No, he’s not here,” the desk sergeant replied. “That you, Barney?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought I recognized your voice. You wanna see Chick, try the dump.”

  “I should’ve guessed,” said Cole. “It’s a starry night.”

  “And there’s a moon,” the sergeant said. “Take your piece, have some fun.”

  When his clients had been mostly criminals, high on whatever they could get their hands on, he had occasionally carried a small revolver against the ribs, though always with the fear it would go off by itself and maim him for life. But he knew how to use it, at least well enough to stand next to police officers at the dump and fire fast at rats. Midnight contests with revolvers barking, a blood sport with rats erupting. The cops were good, especially Ryan, who was the best.

  Cole drove through quiet Andover streets, windows wide open for the breeze, as the night had grown sultry. He took a back way into Lawrence. The dump was at the far side of the city near the Merrimack River, an illegal landfill used by building contractors and others, reachable through the grounds of a derelict tannery and then over a rough road through scrub pine and swamp maple. He drove slowly, the lights of the Cutlass bobbing and sinking. The potholes were deep. The smell of the river, which was low, was stronger than that from the dump. He parked between two police cars, one unmarked, and climbed out.

  “Over here, Barney.”

  The voice came from a direction he had not expected, and he trod over gritty ground through intervals of shadow and moonlight. The moon was brilliant and gave Captain Ryan a silvery cast. Though clad in a custom suit from a Lawrence factory that cut cloth for Brooks Brothers, he was unmistakably a cop, from the staunch thrust of his jaw down to the sturdy tips of his shoes, which glittered like ink. His features were large and strenuous and his eyes deep-set. His wiry hair, which contained a clump of gray, charged out of his head. It was always on the rise, like the man himself. Commander of the early-night platoon, he fully intended to become chief.

  “Aren’t you shooting?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t have to prove myself,” he said, and jerked his thumb. “They do.”

  Deeper into the dump, where anonymous objects lacked luster and definite shape, two young uniformed officers stood stark and still, one thin like a knife and the other somewhat stout. Each held a service revolver low against his leg. Cole guessed at a glance that they were rookies who did things for Ryan and liked to impress him.

  Ryan’s voice shot through the humid air. “This is my buddy Barney. You ever need a lawyer, he’s the best.” The officers nodded and then turned away as if something in his tone had told them to. Dropping his voice, he said to Cole, “I tried to call you earlier, line was busy.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What’s the name of the guy again, the one you asked me to check on?”

  “Witlo,” Cole said, “Henry Witlo. Were you able to come up with anything?”

  “Sure. You ask me a favor, you get it. That’s the way it works with pals, right?”

  They had known each other since childhood. Ryan had grown up in the same housing project as Daisy Shea, who was best man at Ryan’s wedding and godfather to Ryan’s first child, the mother a pretty raven-haired girl from Methuen, who was now totally gray and haggard, partly from bearing eight other children. Cole was godfather to the second.

  They began walking toward the car. The towering pines, all their cluster at the top, seemed textured into the night sky, as if they had floated in like clouds to hover high. The ringing of peepers was shrill. Ryan stopped near his unmarked car and leaned a buttock against it. The radio was quiet now.

  “I called the Chicopee PD. I got a friend there.” He patted himself down for his pocket notebook but could not find it. “It’s all right, I remember the essentials. This Witlo guy’s a bum. Works only when he has to, rest of the time lives off women.”

  “Was he in the army?”

  “Yeah. Vietnam. He plays that up.”

  “Does he have a record?”

  “Nothing much. Disorderly conduct, trespassing, malicious damage to property, crap like that. The older cops usually went easy on him. They knew his mother, if you know what I mean.”

  “No.”

  “She was a hot number. Cops used to pick her up to play with. Cop wasn’t considered a cop till Wanda Witlo did French on him.”

  “Nice cops.”

  “It happens.” Ryan grinned. “But not here. Not my boys.”

  Cole’s head went to one side. “Is it true she was murdered?”

  “If you want to call it that. She was found in a ditch, could’ve been hit by a car. That was some ten years ago.”

  “Henry thinks a cop did it.”

  “Who knows? More to the point, who cares?” Abruptly the radio crackled, and then the monotonous voice of the dispatcher cut through and directed a cruiser to a domestic disturbance on Newton Street, south side of the city. “I know the address,” Ryan said with ruthless satisfaction. “White woman living with a spic. One of these nights he’s goi
ng to slice her throat. Then he’s ours.”

  Cole looked up at the stars. “Pretty world.”

  “We see the worst, Barney. The best is for other people.” He stepped away from the car and called through a cupped hand to the young officers, “How’s it going, you guys?” There was no response.

  “They must see something,” he said, his tough face pointed out. Then he swung it back to Cole. “Now let me ask you something. What the hell’s Witlo doing in Lawrence? Don’t we have enough bums?”

  “He wants to better himself. Can’t deny a man that.”

  “What’s he to you?”

  “Nothing. It’s a favor to Louise.”

  Something subtle changed in Ryan’s face, and his lips barely moved. “We talking Louise Leone?”

  “It’s Baker now.”

  “Yeah, I know. Only woman ever made me shit my pants. I’m not going to ask what Witlo is to her. I could guess, but I’m not going to. Don’t tell me anything, I mean that.”

  Cole said, “We both owe her.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  Shots rang out, rapid and then paced, and Cole and Ryan looked at each other. They retraced their steps through the moonlight and quietly approached the rookie officers, who were holding their smoking revolvers skyward. The stench of cordite was killing. The knifelike officer stared at Ryan, his long face divided by a tentative smile. The stout officer stood stiff and square, waiting for praise.

  “Not bad,” Ryan said, stepping past them to inspect two messes strewn on the ground like bloody mechanic’s rags. Only the pinkish-gray tails identified them. Ryan’s gaze shifted to a much bigger mess, the large head whole, the eyes zeros. “But the cat don’t count,” he said.

  • • •

  “I’m here to work,” Henry Witlo said to Cole’s secretary with only half his usual smile. It was ten in the morning, and his face was puffy from a bad sleep, his stomach was not pulled in, and his hair was in need of a cut. The nap on the back of his neck fuzzed out at the sides like little feathers. “Did you hear me?” he said.

  “Yes, I heard you,” Marge said vaguely over her typewriter, a mug of coffee steaming beside her. Her penny eyes were on him in a way that did not entirely acknowledge him.

  He said, “Mr. Cole called the Y, left word I was to come here ‘stead of his house.”

  “Attorney Cole is busy. You’ll have to wait.”

  “No problem,” he said, stepping toward one of the chairs against the wall.

  “There’s coffee in the conference room,” she said. “You can wait there.”

  “This is fine right here, if you don’t mind.”

  She minded.

  “Christ,” he said, “I’m not going to bite you.”

  Twenty minutes later he was standing in Cole’s office with his hands driven into his back pockets and his elbows winged out. He cocked his head. “I guess your lady doesn’t want me around the house,” he said, and Cole looked up from the clutter of his desk.

  “There’re things you can do here.”

  “I don’t think your secretary likes me either. The problem is, Mr. Cole, people like me right off the bat or they don’t like me at all, ever. They add me up too fast, total comes to nothing. Or comes to something I’m not. In Nam I pissed off a lieutenant just by the way I chewed gum.”

  Cole’s expression softened. “You’re hard to figure out, Henry. Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “I got lots of problems, but I try to keep ’em to myself. Don’t like to bother people. Worst thing in the world is to be a pain in the ass, I know that. All I want, Mr. Cole, is to make something of myself. I don’t want to be a big shot, just want to amount to something. That’s why I’m going to hit the books again.” His smile suddenly was full-blown. “I might even become a lawyer like you. A guy at the Y thought I was one. What d’you think of that?”

  Cole absently shifted documents from one part of his desk to another. “All you’ll get working here is five bucks an hour. That’s not much, and it’s only part-time.”

  “I’ll manage. I’ve had it tough before. There were times I lived on Twinkies. The sugar kept me going.”

  “Then if you’re going to work out of this office, you should wear a real shirt. And you could use a haircut.”

  “I understand. I don’t want to shame you.” He pushed his hair back. “Truth is, Mr. Cole. I want you to be proud of me.”

  “You don’t need me to be proud of you. I’m not your father.”

  “Hey, Mr. Cole, I’m not looking for a father. A mother was enough.”

  • • •

  Despite the heat of the early June sun and the muggy air, Emma Goss was out among her flowers, weeding, thinning, and watering. Years ago around the flower beds her husband had laid a narrow stone path and nearby had anchored a birdbath. He had enjoyed puttering around on weekends, clad in the mended trousers of an old suit, a garden or lawn tool in his hand. Sometimes, when the sun slanted over the house at an obscure angle, she seemed to detect his footprints in the grass, a comforting illusion, for she was sure it meant he was still watching out for her, protecting her in a way no alarm system or passing police car could.

  Through a break in the privet hedge she glimpsed her neighbor Mrs. Whipple shaking Japanese beetles off a rosebush. Mrs. Whipple, who was wearing a sundress, freckles dusting her shoulders, was in her early forties and had an adolescent daughter. Mrs. Goss wanted to give her a neighborly greeting but lacked the nerve to speak first to someone she did not know well, even though the family, distantly cordial, had lived next door for four years and had sent a note of condolence when Harold died. The opportunity to speak passed when the woman moved out of sight. Mrs. Goss returned to her flowers.

  The sun was warm on her back, and she could feel herself perspiring. Her soft fingers were hot inside her gloves as she crouched low among the lilies, of which there were a variety, so that when some were losing their bloom others were gaining theirs, ensuring color from late May into the middle of August. Groping into the foliage to get at the weeds, she felt that the punishment of the sun was good for her constitution and the exercise vital to her health. Once she had flirted with the idea of yoga classes, but an image of herself in a bulging leotard had horrified her. She gave a start when her bare arm brushed a spiderweb and a bigger start when she heard a male voice behind her.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  She was on her feet in the instant.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said as she pressed a hand over her heart, for the moment conscious only of his bleached blue eyes and his yellow hair neatly combed and parted. “I rang the front bell,” he said, “but I guess you can’t hear it out here.”

  “The windows are closed,” she said, conscious now of her untidy appearance, especially of the sweat blotches on her blouse and the grass stains on her knees, though her knees could not be seen. “To keep the house cool,” she explained as he stepped closer with a polite smile. He had on a short-sleeved check shirt tucked tight into his jeans, and he smelled of a barbershop. In his hand was an envelope.

  “Then you didn’t hear the phone either. Someone was supposed to call you, tell you I was coming. You’re Mrs. Goss, right?”

  She nodded tentatively and removed her gloves, aware of a palpitation. She feared he was bearing bad news of a completely unexpected nature. Perhaps her payment to one of the utility companies had been lost in the mail and he was here to shut off the service … and all the neighbors would know.

  He said, “I work for Mr. Cole. He’s got something for you to sign. I don’t know what it’s about, but I guess you do.”

  She looked at him deadpan, for her mind had not yet moved ahead.

  “Something about your house,” he said helpfully, and gave her the envelope, which she opened with awkward fingers. Then, with a flood of relief, she saw that the document was a formal notification to the realtor that she no longer wanted to place her house on the market.

  “Yes, of course,
I’ll sign it,” she said eagerly.

  They moved to the breezeway connecting the house and garage, where he produced a pen from the pocket of his new shirt. When she affixed her signature above her typewritten name, a wave of satisfaction passed through her, as if something vital had been restored. Tears formed in her eyes like a membrane over her emotions. She slipped the paper back into the envelope and returned it to him. Then, retracting the point, she gave back the pen and gazed at him with gratitude. She felt that in some way she should repay him.

  “Would you like some ice tea? I could bring you out a glass.”

  “Thank you just the same, ma’am, but I got more things to do for Mr. Cole. My first day on the job, I don’t want to mess up.” He raised an arm and pointed. “I go that way, it takes me to South Broadway, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, happy to provide direction, to steer him on course.

  “I’m still learning my way around. I’m new to Lawrence.” His smile was big. “You got a nice house here, Mrs. Goss, the kind you see in the nicer parts of Chicopee. That’s where I’m from. I’m Polish, you might’ve guessed.”

  She had not. She had thought Swedish. Birds clamored from high in a neighbor’s tree that she had watched grow from a sapling. “I’ve lived here a long time,” she said, and wondered how she could ever have considered moving.

  He said, “I heard Mr. Cole’s secretary mention you lost your husband not so long ago.”

  “Yes,” she said in a voice she did not immediately recognize as her own. A robin flew to the neighbor’s tree and dissolved in the leaves. “A heart attack took him away.”

  His voice also sounded different. “I know what it’s like to lose somebody,” he said and, in taking leave, patted her shoulder.

  • • •

  Barney Cole finished his business in district court and crossed the street to Dolce’s Cafeteria, a deep hole-in-the-wall where denizens of the court and hangers-on gathered throughout the morning in numbers that diminished drastically by midafternoon. Now only a few tables were occupied. Cole carried his coffee away from the high counter, approached a table, and said, “Mind if I join you?”

  “I’d be mad if you didn’t.”