Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

  “No surprise at all,” Cole said, “but still a shock.” They rose from their chairs, Arnold furling his souvenir program and then pausing to rub his legs. Cole said, “As I remember, you and my father never took me to a game.”

  “Course not. We didn’t figure baseball was for kids.”

  They followed the last of the crowd out of the park and trekked across Kenmore Square to the lot where Cole had left the Cutlass. A fresh dent in the driver’s door was impossible to miss, but Cole ignored it. He opened the door and unlatched Arnold’s side.

  “We should’ve taken my car,” Arnold said. “I smelled oil all the way from Lawrence.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Figured you knew.” Arnold anchored himself down with a seat belt and lowered his window for air. Cole failed to start the engine with the first try but succeeded with the second. Arnold said, “You don’t take care of a car. Your father didn’t either.”

  The air in Kenmore Square was gritty. Arnold raised the window. On Storrow Drive the traffic was a river of noise. On the up-ramp to Interstate 93 Cole said, “There’s something I never asked my father. I’d like to ask you, Arnold. Why did he put himself on the take? It wasn’t like him.”

  “Don’t judge him, Barney.”

  “I’m not. I’m just asking.”

  “It was expected of him,” Arnold said flatly. “You know how Lawrence works. A few phantom jobs in a department, a modest kickback from a contractor, that’s all considered legitimate. If your old man hadn’t done it, no one would’ve trusted him. They’d have shunned him. And let’s face it, he wasn’t the sort to rock the boat. So he went along. That answer your question?”

  Cole had an unsavory image of his father floating among city hall officials habited in dark overcoats collared with ratty strips of fake fur. “He wasn’t very smart about it. Long after he quit taking, the state cops came in and got enough so the D.A. could’ve indicted.”

  “That’s the irony, Barney. He was never greedy, never brought attention to himself. It was the flagrant guys the cops came after, and when those guys got caught they started finking on everybody. That’s how your father got swept into it. If it wasn’t for you getting help from Louise, he’d have died a broken man.”

  “I did what I had to.”

  “You were his son. What else could you do?”

  “When I got married he bought me a house. I knew the money was dirty. I’m still living in it.”

  “That bothers you?”

  “It didn’t at the time.”

  “You had to take it. Otherwise you’d have made him feel lower than he already felt.” Arnold dropped the window an inch and enjoyed the breeze, his eye on faster-moving cars that fishtailed into other lanes. “You work at it hard enough, Barney, there’s always a way to justify everything you do.”

  “That’s what bothers me the most, Arnold.”

  Arnold scooched down in his seat, the belt buckle riding up on him. “Do what I do, Barney. Act like the whole world is perfect.” He closed his eyes. “Don’t mind, do you? I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  Two or three minutes later Cole pressed down on the accelerator and switched lanes. He thought Arnold was asleep but soon felt a touch on his arm.

  “Take your time getting me home, Barney. All I got waiting is a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti.”

  Cole made himself a sandwich and plucked a bottle of dark German beer from the refrigerator. In the sun room he flicked on the small television set and, with his feet up, watched highlights of the Red Sox loss on the six o’clock news. When the camera panned the stands he looked for himself and Arnold, but the movement was too swift. During the weather report he thought he heard a car pull into the drive but moments later detected the sound of one puttering away. Then the telephone rang. Taking his bottle of beer with him, he answered it in the kitchen. The caller was Marge, working late, reminding him that he had an early court case in the morning. “Go home,” he told her.

  “Easy for you to say. A Mr. Cruickshank called, wouldn’t tell me what he wanted, said he’d call back sometime.”

  “I’m sure he will. By the way, Marge, put yourself down for a ten-percent raise, effective next paycheck.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You deserve it. After you do that, go home.”

  He finished his beer and set the bottle in the sink. He was peeling pages of the calendar, wondering when he and Kit Fletcher might coordinate a vacation, when the phone rang again. He picked it up with a smile, thinking it was Marge with something she had forgotten to tell him.

  “It’s me.” The voice was Louise Baker’s. “I’m back.”

  “I heard you were,” he said. “Why?”

  “My mother still needs me.”

  The reply did not entirely wash. Mrs. Leone had always struck him as an independent person even in times of calamity and tragedy. He said, “You’re a good daughter.”

  “Family’s important. Friends are too.”

  “You sound different.”

  “I am,” she said. “I’ve come to a decision about the rest of my life, nothing I can tell you about on the phone, but I think you’ll like it.”

  He guessed what it was and said, “Tired of working?”

  “Yes, Barney. That’s it exactly. Time I was the real lady of the manor. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  “I thought you would. Now I want you to do me a favor — and don’t argue, just do it. Go look out your front door, then come back and tell me what you see.”

  On his way he checked the time, for he wanted to watch the network news at seven. Opening the door, he saw nothing extraordinary until he shifted his gaze. Sitting in the driveway was a brand-new Cutlass Supreme much like the one West Street Motors had briefly lent him, except this one had a roof rack and fancier hubcaps. He returned to the phone.

  “Whose is it?”

  “Yours, Barney. From me to you. A gift, an apology, call it what you want, just don’t refuse it.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  She spoke passionately. “It’s a token of what I owe you, and I do owe you, Barney, I really do. You’re always there for me. You don’t know what that means to me.”

  “The answer’s no, Lou. Definitely no.”

  “You drive a junk, for God’s sake. A man your age should drive something better. So let me do this, OK?”

  “No,” he said with an excruciating feeling that there was something more he should be doing, that there was some significant precaution he should be taking against her. The feeling haunted him.

  She said, “Keep it for a few days. Drive it around, see how it goes. If you still don’t want it, I’ll take it back. I promise.”

  “I like my own car, Lou. When I want a new one, I’ll buy it myself.”

  “But you won’t. You’ll drive what you’ve got into the ground. I know you, Barney. So do this for me.”

  “How do you think the feds will look at it? Use your head, Lou.”

  “With you, Barney, it’s my heart. Are you alone?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “Can you get away?”

  “Impossible.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I’d never want to mess up your life. But keep the car, Barney. Please.”

  “No way,” he said, but she had already rung off.

  He went outside, a tremor of anger tripping his legs. The car in the drive glimmered in a fanciful way, as if breathing its own life. The windows were slightly lowered, and the driver’s door opened with a touch, exuding in scent and polish the newness of the interior. He suffered throes of regret when his shoe sullied the paper mat shielding the real one. The seat was a woman’s lap. He skimmed the heel of his hand down a slope of leather and experimentally flicked the ignition key into the first notch. Points of fire streaked across the digital panels like the spitting tongues of snakes. Ownership papers carrying his name lay beside him, along with a small
vellum envelope, which he opened. The notepaper was scented, the script was Louise’s. “You were my first.” A lie, but so what? The car started up with all the force and none of the noise of a modern weapon. Then, with scarcely a nudge, it taxied toward the empty half of his garage.

  • • •

  Daisy Shea had a hundred dollars in his pocket, the price he’d gotten for the furniture in his minuscule office, twin file cabinets included. Depression had gripped him when he closed up the office for the last time, but later, downtown, a haircut and shoeshine made him feel right again. He began strolling Essex Street. It was a lovely afternoon, none nicer that he could remember, the sort of day that reinforced his theory that diseases in all stages were negotiable and his own sickness curable with a simple swallow of medicine, the trick being to find the right one.

  Plate glass mirrored him and the growing crust of traffic beyond him. The hour was not as early as he would have liked, but nothing in life, he reasoned, was truly perfect. From a women’s store lilac-eyed mannequins flirted with him. Pausing, he flirted back. His stomach felt fine, and his barbered white hair gave him, he mused, a distinguished look tainted only by the stain on his tie. Behind him an elderly Hispanic woman dropped a package, which delighted him, a chance to do a good deed, perform a service. He swooped it up with a flourish and was thanked in overwhelming Spanish. Several stores down, he went into Kap’s and bought a tie.

  At ten after five he was one of a handful in the dining room at Bishop’s. A marvelous neatness marked the person and manner of his waitress, whose brown eyes were enormous. Her figure was dainty. As soon as she set down his drink, a double Cutty on the rocks, he felt awash in a tide of good cheer and fond memories. Here, more than two decades ago, family and friends had toasted him and Barney Cole, Lawrence’s newest lawyers. Here, over lamb on a stick, Edith had mentioned that she was carrying their first child, which had hastened their marriage. Here he had entertained clients, pals, persons with wit, sportsmen with schemes, secretaries with sad stories, and always he had preempted the check, his pleasure, his nature. Those had been special years, the best, but the speed with which they had vanished astounded him.

  At five-thirty the waitress asked whether he was ready to order. Yes, indeed, he told her, and made a show of examining the menu, which he knew by heart. His eyes strayed to her. She was too young, too hale, too alive, with everything ahead of her: heartache, bad luck, suspicious lumps, disappointments of the highest order. Why in the world would he envy her?

  “I don’t,” he said aloud, surprising himself.

  “Don’t what?” she asked.

  “I don’t want French fries,” he said rapidly, as if she had caught him in a struggle with his diet. “Bad stomach, you know.” He reexamined the menu. “Prime rib sounds good. Rare. Very rare. They’ll know. Tell them it’s for Daisy.” He lifted his Cutty glass, weightless in his grip. “And another of this.”

  At six o’clock many more tables were occupied, which pleased him though the lack of familiar faces disappointed him. The dinner crowd, unlike that at lunch, was mostly from out of town. He cut into a slab of beef that looked gory, as if it had just been plucked from the animal. He savored each bite while chewing carefully on tender teeth and wished now he had gotten the French fries. The waitress, busy at other tables, slipped over to his.

  “Everything all right, sir?”

  “Please, call me Daisy,” he said with immense sympathy for her and a gladness for himself.

  The place filled up by seven o’clock, with new arrivals congregating in the lobby or slipping downstairs to the lounge. The wine waiter, energetically busy, flitted from station to station. Daisy missed the ornate costume and tinkling accessories of the previous wine waiter, killed some five years ago in a car crash, but he was elated when he glimpsed the faraway faces of a couple of brother lawyers. Good old Herbie Schultz, a Suffolk grad to boot, with his wife, Carol, a lovely person. At another table blustery but softhearted Ignatius Piscitello, another Suffolk alum, with his wife, Suzanne, who was assistant superintendent of schools. Good God, there was State Senator Pat McGovern and her mother, Phyllis! He knew the whole family, cousins and all. This was his world. The world was right, his life was in sync, and his stomach was strong. His waitress returned.

  “It’s all perfect,” he said.

  “Enjoy,” she said.

  The lilt of her voice, the warmth of the scotch in his chest, the caressing sight of the familiar faces all served to uncork him. He began to cry.

  The waitress, startled, said, “What’s wrong, Daisy?”

  “I’m happy,” he said.

  Abe Bashara, the restaurant’s gentle doe-eyed owner, came over. “What’s the matter?” he asked softly.

  “He’s happy,” the waitress said.

  “I am, Abe. I’m happier than I’ve been in years. I’m going to be waked from here, did you know that?”

  Abe, without batting an eye said, “No, I didn’t.”

  “Barney Cole should’ve mentioned it, surprised he didn’t. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Certainly not,” Abe said.

  “I’ve paid my dues.”

  “You have,” Abe said, not mentioning the large uncollectable tab Daisy had run up over the years.

  “I love Lawrence,” he said through his tears. “I love the house where I was born. I love this restaurant. The whole city passes through it.” His face was trembling, his stomach hurting.

  Abe whispered to the waitress, “Tell my brother to call Barney Cole.”

  • • •

  The sergeant rapped on the frosted glass of the open door and said, “Excuse me, Cap’n, but there’s two guys looking to see you.”

  Chick Ryan glanced up from the newspaper spread out on his desk and tugged the creamy cuffs of his dress shirt a good inch below the sleeves of his fawn summer suit. His braided captain’s uniform, back from the dry cleaner, hung flat against the wall. He said, “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know, but if I was gonna guess I’d say feds.”

  “You’ve been wrong before.”

  “Bet I’m not this time.”

  Chick folded the newspaper and tossed it beneath his desk. He did not rise when the two men appeared, one fair and the other black. The door closed behind them. The fair one, Cruickshank, produced identification. “I’m impressed,” Chick said.

  “This is Agent Blue.”

  “No shit. Any relation to Agent Orange?” Chick guffawed. “Sorry. I couldn’t help that.” There were chairs, but he did not ask them to sit. “I might as well tell you, Blue, I’ve got racial prejudices, but I keep them pretty well hidden.”

  “That’s all right,” Blue said. “I have the same sickness.”

  “No cure, right?”

  “None on the horizon.”

  Cruickshank said, “We tried to get hold of you once before, but you were out of town.”

  “Was I? When?”

  “Must’ve been a week ago.”

  “That so?” Chick creaked back in his rotary chair. “Where’d I go?”

  “That’s your business, Captain. Of course if you want to tell us we’ll listen.”

  Chick did not return Cruickshank’s smile. “Why don’t you guys tell me what you want, quit beating around the fucking bush?”

  “We don’t want anything, Captain. Unless you have something you think might interest us?”

  “What would I have? You tell me.”

  “You’re overreacting,” Cruickshank said mildly. “This is only a courtesy call to let you know we’re in the area. This is an exciting little city you have here.”

  Chick regarded him with narrow eyes. “We have our ups and downs.”

  “That was a bit of drama the other night at the convenience store,” Cruickshank went on. “Blue and I happened to catch the tail end of it. Glad you got your man.”

  “It was a clean shoot. I’m proud of my boys. Is that why you guys are here? You think they violated somebody’s civil righ
ts?”

  “I didn’t say that. Did you say that, Blue?”

  Blue’s gaze was on the uniform hanging against the wall. “I didn’t say a word. I know my place.”

  “You guys are playing patty cake,” Chick said, his face sharply alert. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Relax, Captain.” Cruickshank waved an assuring hand. “We’re just nosing around. It’s what we do best. Most of the stuff we come up with we don’t even use. Just store it in the computer.”

  “What are you nosing around here for?”

  “It’s an interesting area. You got some heavy hitters here. That includes Tony Gardella’s sister.”

  “I heard of him. He’s dead. I don’t know her.”

  “Lives in Andover.”

  “That’s a different world,” Chick said with disdain. “Andover, the birds tweet. Here, we only got pigeons. All they do is crap. Put that in your computer.”

  Blue said, “That’s a nifty uniform hanging there. I bet you look good in it.”

  Cruickshank said, “I like his suit better. Custom-made, isn’t it?”

  “You only go this way once,” Chick said, unfazed, unsmiling. His eyes swept over Cruickshank. “That suit you’re wearing didn’t come off a rack.”

  “True, Captain, but the difference is I have only one. I bet you have a closetful.”

  “That’s a good bet. Go find somebody to take your action. You’ll win.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “You’re pretty confident.”

  “I got nothing to hide.”

  There was a momentary silence as Cruickshank and Blue shared a look that harbored a smile. Blue shifted his weight from one lean leg to the other and said, “I had a uniform like that, I’d wear it.”

  “I had fingers like yours,” Chick said, “I’d play basketball. Where the fuck did you get those fingers?”

  “Africa.” Blue held up a hand. “White women find them sexy.”

  The color rose faintly in Chick’s face. Also his heart seemed to beat a little faster, as if a bit too much were bearing down on him. He had dealt with feds before, but never this intimately. Cruickshank said to him, “Another heavy hitter is Louise Baker. You probably know her as Leone.”