Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

  He was in exactly the same position, but something was different. Something rigid about the set of his legs, something off in his color. She stepped to the bed, listened for his breathing, and heard none. His face was shut, his head tipped as if a prop had been pulled from the back of it. Viewing him numbly, she said in a hollow voice, “You’re never going to open your eyes again, are you Daisy?”

  An eye jittered. It winked at her. “Fooled you,” he said.

  “You bastard!” she said through a rush of tears.

  • • •

  Barney Cole drank his coffee fast. Kit Fletcher took her time. She was leaving later, after the commuter rush. She sat at the kitchen table with her bare feet tossed up on the chair Cole had just vacated. He looked at her from the kitchen sink, where he was rinsing out his cup. “I wish I had your hours,” he said.

  “No, you don’t. Sometimes I’m in the office till midnight. When I’m in litigation I don’t sleep.”

  “Ever consider taking things a little easier?” he asked, moving to her and standing neat and tall in a cord suit back from the cleaner’s. She lifted a foot, angling it at his pant legs.

  “No, I’ve been thinking of increasing my schedule,” she said. Her foot was playful.

  “You’re in a terrific mood.”

  “I feel good, Barney. My life is going right, and I know where I want it to take me.”

  “Am I included in the journey?”

  She swept the hair out of her face. “In a very vital way, but we can talk about it tonight.”

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “Give me a clue.”

  “My biological clock is ticking loud, Barney.” She retracted her foot, its effect obvious. “I think it’s telling me something.”

  “I see.”

  “I thought you would. It’s worth discussing, no?”

  He smiled down upon her. Smiling back, she seemed to give off her own golden light. “What would you want, a boy or girl?” he asked.

  “I’d prefer a girl.”

  We don’t always get what we want.”

  “I understand there are ways now.”

  “I wouldn’t want anything scientific.”

  “We can discuss everything tonight.” She brought her foot up again, a soft jab. “Kiss me and get out of here.”

  “One last question,” he said. “Would this be with or without a wedding ring?”

  She lifted her face for the kiss, took it, and said, “In some ways I’m a very conventional gal.”

  A couple of minutes later Cole backed the Cutlass out of the garage. Despite the unquestionable promise of more heat and humidity, it was one of those splendid summer days when he felt zestful, irrepressible, immeasurable, but when he turned onto Wildwood Road the car stalled. He let it roll to the shoulder and twisted the key. It started up again, gasped, and gave out for good. The motor, the battery, or something was dead.

  Cutting across a neighbor’s lawn, admiring towers of Shasta daisies, he made his way back toward the house. He paused once to tie a shoe, propping his foot on a white wooden post serving as a property marker. He entered the house through the sun room. He did not see Kit and thought she might be showering. Then he heard her voice and stopped short.

  “No, I can’t do that,” she said in a tone of exasperation. She was on the phone, the cord stretched to the sink and wrapped half around her waist. She had a hand on her hip. “Listen,” she said, “there’s a limit to what I can do.”

  He smiled, guessing she was talking to a partner no longer a level above her, and moved into the dining room. Again her voice stopped him. It was cold and direct.

  “Quit pushing, Cruickshank. I’ve had dinner with her, I’ve told you everything she said, I’ve done my bit… . What? … No, he’s told me nothing.” Then she turned slightly to free herself of the cord and saw Cole.

  “Keep talking,” he said.

  She killed the connection.

  “Silly world, isn’t it?” he said, gazing at her from the archway of the dining room. “Full of weird surprises.”

  Collecting herself, she said, “Would you like an explanation?”

  “I’m sure it’s a good one,” he said, his smile bittersweet.

  • • •

  Louise Baker slept as if drugged until her mother shook her, shouted over her, raised the shade and let the sun hit her. Louise pulled the sheet tighter around her, and her mother yanked it off. She was naked. “I don’t see you that way since you be a baby,” her mother said, staring hard. “I don’t know you. Whose child are you?”

  “Yours, Mama. Never anybody else’s.”

  “Those not my bazooms. They my sister Rosa’s. You get up.”

  She rose sluggishly and sat on the side of the bed, manipulating her arms into a robe. She yawned, rubbed a bare foot with the other, and said, “What time is it?”

  “Eight.”

  “Oh, my God.” She had wanted to sleep till noon. Her mother aimed a finger.

  “You promise you take me to the cemetery.”

  “So early?”

  “Before it gets too hot. You hurry.”

  Bathed and dressed, her feet fitted into white pumps, she drank her coffee in the kitchen, where her mother rambled in Italian, stories about her father she did not wish to hear, revelations she did not want to know, certain suspicions she did not want confirmed. When her mother’s mind wandered into fantasy, she said in an interrupting voice, “Were you listening to the radio at all?”

  “What radio?”

  “Any radio at all, Mama. I thought you might’ve had on the news.”

  “What kind of news?”

  “Any kind.”

  “I don’t listen,” her mother said with sudden impatience. “You get ready now. Put some lipstick on.”

  “Papa wouldn’t like that,” she said dryly.

  “Papa won’t see.”

  She was doing her face in the bathroom mirror when the telephone rang, the shrillness startling her. Quickly, resorting to an old trick learned as a child, she ran warm water over her wrists to calm herself. She was using the towel when her mother appeared.

  “The woman who works for you says it’s very important.”

  She folded the towel and hung it neatly. “Mrs. Mennick?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why don’t you wait for me in the car, Mama? I’ll be right there.”

  “Yes, you talk your business.”

  “It’s not business. It’s personal.” She held the phone loosely until her mother left and then spoke into it, her voice clear and precise. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Mr. Ben’s gone out of his mind,” Mrs. Mennick said.

  She stared at gilt-framed religious pictures her mother kept on the wall, one Madonna and two Christs, one as an infant and the other nailed to the cross.

  “It wasn’t my fault, Mrs. Baker.”

  “Nobody’s blaming you.”

  “Nothing I could do. Even Howard couldn’t handle him. He ran off, and we had to look for him in the dark.”

  “Nobody’s fault, Mrs. Mennick, except maybe nature’s. Where is he?”

  “Back in the hospital. Somebody had to sign him in. I signed your name, Mrs. Baker. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did right. How bad is he?”

  Mrs. Mennick sobbed. “He’s catatonic.”

  “Like the last time he went in?”

  “Worse.”

  The telephone cord was snarled. Louise straightened it and asked for the number of the hospital, which she presently jotted on the face of her mother’s electric bill, along with the office number of the doctor who had previously treated Ben.

  “There’s something else, Mrs. Baker. Nothing to do with Mr. Ben, but I think I should mention it.”

  Louise waited.

  “Two men came to the house, one black. They showed me identification and asked questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” Louise asked.

  “About you, Mrs
. Baker. I told them nothing.”

  Louise folded the electric bill in half and slipped it into the side pocket of her bag. “Anything else, Mrs. Mennick?”

  “I might give my brother a few groceries now and then, but I’m loyal to you.” There was another sob. “And to Mr. Ben.”

  Louise’s mother was waiting in the shade of a red maple that throbbed with birds. Together they walked toward the Porsche, which was baking in the sun. “That call bring you problems?” her mother asked.

  “No, Mama, no problems.” She slipped an arm around the old woman’s frail shoulders.

  “Too hot for that,” Mrs. Leone said, and shrugged her off.

  • • •

  Kit Fletcher still held the dead phone. Deliberately she hung it up with a bittersweetness that matched his. “Pullman and Gates is a big firm, Barney. It has a chummy relationship with the government. Several members have held high positions in the Justice Department.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “No, you don’t. In their world, everything’s hardball.”

  “I know that too. The big leagues. Curves and sliders.” His smile had turned rigidly polite and eerily understanding. “The feds wanted you to do them a favor. I assume that after some quick thought you said no, but your bosses put pressure on you. Of course they didn’t want to make it seem they were forcing you into anything, so they added a sweetener. Senior partnership, which you deserved anyway, should’ve been yours a long time ago. Am I in the ballpark?”

  “More or less,” she said negligently, as if details did not matter, only intentions. “But in no way did I agree to hurt you. Information on your friend was all they wanted, and after all, I am an officer of the court.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard the argument.”

  “I always went out of my way to protect you, and there was little enough I could pass on about her. You saw to that.”

  “But every little bit helps. A piece that doesn’t fit now can fit later. We lawyers know that, don’t we?”

  “You’re a good lawyer, Barney, but I’m a bigger one. With the stakes involved, I had no choice.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “No, I didn’t. My life’s on a course.” Her eyes were a deepening blue and declarative. “Your friend’s on a course too. She’s a smart lady. She’ll be all right.”

  Cole altered his voice, make it slightly more responsive. “Nobody’s that smart. Enough people want you, they get you.” He stepped into the kitchen, past her, to the telephone. “I think she’s had it, Kit. With a little bit of help from me and you.” He called the Mobil station on South Main and asked for a tow truck. Then he began flipping through the directory.

  “Don’t call a taxi,” she said. “I can give you a ride.”

  “You have your own schedule.” He rustled through the Yellow Pages. “By the way, you played your part well.”

  “I didn’t want you to know. I hoped you wouldn’t.”

  “Blame my automobile. I should’ve traded it in months ago.”

  “Barney.” Her voice took on a softer quality. “Before you come to any final judgments, any decision, I want you to know I still feel we can have something fine together. For what it’s worth, I love you.”

  “It’s worth a lot,” he said.

  “But?”

  “But your terms are too high. Too much fine print I didn’t know about.”

  “Why don’t we wait and talk about it tonight? As we planned.”

  “Why don’t we give it a rest?” he said.

  “You don’t want to see me tonight?”

  They gazed at each other affectionately. He said, “Not tonight.”

  “What are you telling me, Barney? You might as well say it straight.”

  He lifted the receiver and called for a taxi.

  • • •

  He was riding the elevator to his office when he learned from two other lawyers that Chick Ryan had been shot to death. He went pale and pressed for details, but they knew only what they had heard on the radio, a sparse report of a double killing off Park Street, the other victim a male Hispanic. “You knew Ryan pretty well, didn’t you, Barney?” one of the lawyers said, and Cole nodded. His stomach turned. When the doors wheezed open, he stepped out like a pallbearer in need of directions.

  Later, at Dolce’s, he learned more. Arnold Ackerman, who had friends throughout the police department, said in a near whisper, “Something’s funny about it. He wasn’t on duty. Told his wife he was going to the Hibernian Club. That’s where she thought he was, tipping a few. The question is, what the hell was he doing alone in a Spanish neighborhood with a known pusher. Rafael Somebody?”

  Cole took a chew of a doughnut and cast it aside, no appetite. “Maybe he was undercover.”

  “Captains don’t do undercover. Certainly not Chick.”

  “Maybe the guy was his snitch.”

  “Look me straight in the eye, Barney, tell me you believe that.”

  “He could’ve been trying to bust him.”

  “Sure. Alone? That sound like Chick?”

  “You tell me, Arnold.”

  Arnold picked up the doughnut Cole did not want and nibbled on it. “We both know the reputation he had. Some guys at the station speculate he went in with his hand out, something went wrong. He got too greedy, is what they think.”

  “What do you think, Arnold?”

  “I think it was a shame, whatever it was.” He abandoned the doughnut, not to his liking, not a honeydip.

  Cole said, “Any idea how his wife’s doing?”

  “How would you be doing, situation like this?”

  Cole drew himself erect, feeling another turn in his stomach. “Can I borrow your car?” he asked.

  “Where’s yours?”

  “Towed, I hope.”

  Arnold produced a mass of keys. “It’s got no dents. Bring it back that way.”

  “Where’s it parked?”

  “Judge’s spot. I do it to get his ass.”

  It was a ten-year-old Cadillac, mint condition, the radio tuned to the classical music station. Cole listened to Mendelssohn as he drove up Common Street. He crossed Broadway and maneuvered up rising streets to Chick’s house, where he saw a cruiser parked in the drive, a uniformed officer behind the wheel. Unmarked cars, official-looking because of their sameness, were parked in front. He pulled into the first free space and walked back. The district attorney emerged from the house.

  “What are you doing here, Barney?”

  It was too hot to stand in the sun. They sidled into the shade. Cole said, “I thought I’d talk to Chick’s wife, see if there’s anything I could do.”

  “I wouldn’t disturb her right now,” the district attorney advised. “Too many people in there as it is.”

  “How is she, Chugger?”

  “Nothing’s hit her yet. She still thinks he’s coming home. Christ, I didn’t know Chick had nine children.” He shook his head sadly. “Doesn’t look good. We found a briefcase hidden in the attic. Fifty grand in it, used bills. If it was up to me, I’d have left it there for the family, but too many people are involved now. State police narcotics squad have come into it, and those two feds have taken an interest. You just missed them.”

  “Any conclusions yet?” Cole asked warily.

  “Theories. Narcotics guys think he was taking drug money and got involved in a shoot-out. They don’t know yet, but they think it was Chick shot the other guy. The feds got their own theory, I don’t know what it is.”

  “Can you guess?”

  “I’m not even going to try. I gotta go, Barney.”

  They walked along the sidewalk together. Each passing car, even dirty ones, blazed with sunlight. Neighbors looked out their windows. The district attorney, stopping, stripped off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

  “What a dumb way to die. He had no business doing that to his family, Barney. What the hell kind of cop was he, anyway?”

  “He considered himself one of the best.”r />
  The district attorney tossed his jacket through the open window of his car and pulled open the door. “You know what the greatest pleasure in life is? Bet you think it’s sex. That’s second maybe, but not first.”

  “I’ll bite,” Cole said. “What’s first?”

  “Lying to yourself.”

  • • •

  Two Springfield police officers, one a woman, rousted John Rozzi from bed in the fleabag hotel where he maintained a permanent residence. It was two in the afternoon. A fan whirred from the ceiling, agitating the heat of the room. The room was threadbare but surprisingly neat; the only clutter was dirty laundry heaped in a corner and empty beer bottles on the bureau. The male officer, gazing about, said, “Guy with your money, I’d think you’d live better.”

  John, whose boxer shorts hung to his knees, held a hand over his crotch. “You busting me or what?”

  “Or what,” the officer said. “Come on, get dressed!”

  John groped for his clothes. “Tell the cunt cop to turn her head.”

  The woman, a bit of a thing who wore her cap at an angle, stepped forward as he struggled into his trousers. “I’m Officer Mary Finn,” she said smartly, and with a quick swing laid a baton against his knees. He doubled up with a yelp.

  “One thing you never do is talk smart to Mary,” the other officer said.

  John reeled to one side, gripping and rubbing his knees, cursing foully under his breath. “I can’t walk.”

  “You’ll learn.”

  They threw the rest of his clothes at him, dumped his shoes in front of him. “I got to go to the toilet,” he said.

  The male officer, again gazing about, said, “I don’t see one.”

  “It’s down the hall.”

  “You want Mary or me to go with you?”

  “Not her.”

  Mary Finn said, “Piss your pants.”

  They drove him to the station, escorted him in through a side door, and left him in the interrogation room where he had been questioned before. He hobbled painfully to a chair and sat at the bare table. He was soon joined by the detective with the plump and jovial face. The detective was wearing, he noticed, the same knit shirt with the scruffy little collar curled at the points and the same pants with the defective fly zipper. The only difference he observed was the detective’s manner. It reminded him of a cardplayer who had filled an inside straight.