Aphrodite

by Russell Andrews

  In William Miller’s filmography there was a string of films with titles Justin had never heard of. The titles were followed by the dates the movies were made and the name of the character played by Miller. The first few titles read:

  In the Land of Plenty (1922) . . . Charles Robertson

  The Runaway (1922) . . . Police Chief

  The Safest Place (1922) . . . Professor Allen “Smitty” Smith

  Blue Boy (1923) . . . Roger Darris

  Justin felt disoriented. The dates made no sense. But he kept scrolling, and there it was, just as it had been the first two times he’d scrolled through the info. The next film on the list:

  The Queen of Sheba (1923) . . . The Prince

  He blinked. Rubbed his eyes to make sure they were clear and that he was reading correctly. He barely noticed the rest of the credit roll. There were several films in the 1930s, just a couple in the forties. In the 1950s there was a subhead that read Television Work, and listed from the years 1953 through 1955 was the series Cowboy Bill.

  Justin began to scroll faster. He scanned the mini-biography. Saw the highlights of Miller’s life. Saw that he’d been married. Saw the date his wife died. He saw—and read the line over three times—that the couple had never had any children. Saw that for The Queen of Sheba he had not received an Academy Award—the award hadn’t even come into existence yet—but he was voted Screen magazine’s “Favorite Non-Leading Man of the Year.” Screen’s honor would certainly have been a memorable one for the young actor. Was it memorable enough so, as he got older, it led the old man to tell people he’d won the Oscar? Maybe. One more crazy “maybe” to add to the growing list.

  Miller’s theater credits were listed, too. Justin remembered that the obit had said he was in a 1970s revival of two Clifford Odets plays. William Miller had indeed been in those plays. But not in the 1970s. In the 1930s. In the original productions.

  It was impossible.

  But there were other matches, too. The Miller he was reading about was married to an actress named Jessica Talbot. She’d appeared with him in The Queen of Sheba and she died in 1972. Exactly as Susanna Morgan had written in her obituary. Exactly as Bill Miller must have told her.

  He scrolled back up, read the line one more time: no children.

  No Bill Miller, Jr.

  This had to be the guy Susanna Morgan had known and written about. It had to be. There were too many details that connected. But how could it be? The answer was that it couldn’t. That was the only thing that made any sense at all. It simply couldn’t be.

  Justin got to the end of the bio. Saw that William Miller had been born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Saw that there was no date of death yet listed.

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, he read the date of William Miller’s birth.

  “Jesus Fucking Christ!” Justin Westwood said, and he said it slowly and clearly and very loudly.

  When he realized that his words were reverberating throughout the library, he turned around, saw twenty small children and one grown man with a monkey puppet on his hand all staring at him in shocked silence. He saw Deena Harper, clutching a newspaper, freeze as she stepped through the front door of the building. And he watched as Adrienne the librarian’s eyes opened as wide as they could possibly open.

  The oppressive silence lingered as Justin turned back to the computer screen. He forced himself to read, one more time, the last line of William Miller’s biography.

  Justin thought of the headline in Susanna Morgan’s obituary. The obituary he was more and more certain had gotten her killed.

  cowboy bill dead at 82.

  One last time, he stared at the line on the screen in front of him:

  Date of birth: 1888.

  Impossible, inconceivable, and illogical.

  But there it was in black and white. The proof was staring him right in the face. And there were only two possibilities.

  One: The guy who died wasn’t Bill Miller. But what sense did that make? Why would he lie?

  Which left possibility number two: The guy who died wasn’t eighty-two years old.

  Because if the old man in the retirement home was who he said he was, Cowboy Bill Miller lived until he was 114 years old.

  10

  Justin Westwood knew exactly how Susanna Morgan had felt when she left the library two days earlier. His legs were wobbly and his head was spinning. His mind kept racing around in circles, but there was no logical end to the race. He could come up with no reasonable conclusion or pattern to any of the information he had just gathered. He wanted a drink as badly as he’d ever wanted anything in his life. And even more than that, what he really wanted was to step back in time. He wanted to go back to the moment he’d seen Susanna’s lifeless body on the floor of her bedroom, to ignore the various signs that had pointed to her murder. He wanted to shut out the voice that had told him to go up to Susanna’s roof and wipe out the fact that he’d seen Deena Harper, heard her describe the murder. He wanted to forget the fact that he’d ever met anyone named Wallace P. Crabbe and, more than anything else, he wanted to eradicate from his brain the fact that he’d just verified the impossible on an out-of-date computer in the rinky-dink East End Harbor Library.

  He wanted to close his eyes and make everything disappear.

  Everything.

  But he couldn’t. His eyes were open and everything was right in front of him, in absolutely plain sight. Even if none of it made any sense.

  So in the still silent library, Justin shut off the computer, dropped a ten-dollar bill on Adrienne the librarian’s desk, told Deena that he was leaving, that if she wanted to come she should go get her kid, now, no questions asked, just go, which is exactly what she did, striding into the children’s room, swooping Kendall up under her arm. Justin walked them both home. He didn’t say a word the entire ten minutes. She asked a couple of questions; he just stared, didn’t even bother to shake his head. He walked them back to the apartment on Main Street, didn’t say good-bye. As soon as they were inside, he continued walking straight ahead, kept going until he reached the end of Main, where he made a left. Five minutes later, he was in the East End Retirement Home, talking to Fred, the home’s longtime manager.

  “Sure,” Fred said. “Just like I told Susanna when she called. Bill’s nephew’s name is Ed Marion. Nice guy. Always was. Even when he came up the last time. Helluva nice guy, considering the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances were those?” Justin asked.

  “Well, you know, his uncle being dead and all.”

  “Oh. Those circumstances. So you’d met him before that?”

  “Well, sure. He used to come pretty regularly—four times a year— to see Bill and to pay me.”

  “He paid for Mr. Miller’s stay here?”

  “Every penny of it.”

  “Why didn’t he just send a check?”

  “I guess he liked to visit his uncle. And he didn’t pay by check.”

  “How did he pay?”

  “Cash. Every three months, for the next three months in advance.”

  “Do a lot of people pay cash?”

  “Hell, I wasn’t even sure it was still legal to pay in cash.”

  “So he was the only one.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Did Mr. Miller talk about his nephew, talk about Ed?”

  The manager shook his head. “Nah. Hardly ever. In fact, I don’t think they got along all that well. Old Bill, he used to tell everyone he didn’t have no relatives. One time I heard him say that and I said, ‘What about that nephew of yours? He’s a relative, isn’t he?’”

  “And what did Bill say?”

  “Didn’t say much of anything, as I recall it. He could be a stubborn old coot.”

  “Tell me something, Fred. How long have you worked here?”

  “Me? Six, seven years now.”

  “And how long was Bill Miller here? Before you?”

  “Oh sure. He was a carryover. He’s been here a
while.”

  “Do you know exactly how long?” Justin asked.

  “Pretty close. But not exactly.”

  “Don’t you keep records?”

  “Duhh, yeah, we do. But the day before I started work, literally the day before, we had a robbery. They took some office stuff, a computer, a phone machine, you know, stuff like that. And a bunch of files. God only knows why they wanted that stuff. One of the things they took was Bill’s file. Don’t think they got a lotta dough fencin’ it, I’ll tell you that.”

  Justin stood up to go.

  “You wanna tell me what’s goin’ on here?” Fred asked.

  “I wish I could,” Justin told him. “I really wish I could.”

  Back at the station, Justin went straight to his desk, was already dialing Ed Marion’s phone number before he was even seated in his chair. For some reason, he wasn’t at all surprised when he got a recording telling him that the number he’d dialed was no longer in service.

  He wasn’t surprised, either, when he got Susanna Morgan’s phone records faxed to him slightly less than an hour later and saw that, on the last day of her life, at 2:07 p.m., she had placed one call to Ed Marion’s number and, at 5:54 p.m., received one call from that same number. A number that no longer existed.

  The first call had lasted twenty-seven seconds. Long enough to leave a phone message. The return call had lasted just over four minutes. Plenty of time to have a substantive conversation.

  But what was the substance?

  So a senile actor was mind-bogglingly old. So what? What made that something other than a piece of fascinating and astonishing trivia?

  What made it a fact worth killing over?

  Justin checked the information he received from the phone company. The address that belonged to Edward Marion’s number was 2367 Old Post Road in Weston, Connecticut. It was a valid address. He could take the car ferry over, be there in three hours.

  He could—

  “Hey, Westwood.”

  It was shithead Brian. Justin didn’t bother to look up at the young cop.

  “What are you doin’ playin’ policeman all of a sudden?” Brian said. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

  Justin stood up now. Took three careful steps over to Brian’s desk. But before he did, he palmed the heavy stapler from the corner of his own desk.

  “You’re a tough guy, aren’t you, Brian?”

  Brian smiled up at him from the seat behind his desk. An arrogant and confident smile. “I’m tough enough.”

  “You could kick my ass in a fair fight, couldn’t you?”

  “I could kick the shit out of you. And I wouldn’t mind doin’ it, either, if you want to know the truth.”

  “I believe you. The thing about life, though,” Justin said calmly, “is that it isn’t very fair. Maybe you’re too young to have learned that lesson yet.”

  Brian put his hands down on the desk, spread his fingers apart, ready to use them to push himself up from the chair. “Then maybe you should try to teach me,” he said.

  “I think that would be a good idea.”

  Brian went to stand up, but before he could rise more than an inch or two, Justin slammed the stapler down on the fingers of his right hand. As Brian yelped in pain and looked down at his smashed knuckles, Justin picked up the telephone that sat on Brian’s desk, swung it back, and slammed it into the young cop’s mouth as hard as he could. Brian toppled over backward in his chair, blood streaming down his chin. Justin was certain he’d loosened three or four teeth, maybe even knocked them out completely.

  The younger cop groaned now from his prone position on the floor, looked up at his attacker. Justin could see the hate in his eyes, even through the pain. It wasn’t over yet, he decided. Not quite yet. So he lifted the phone above his head and threw it down with all his might into Brian’s groin. That was the end of Brian’s resistance. He lay on the floor, moaning and twisting in agony, spitting blood, his hands shoved between his legs.

  “Let me explain something to you, Brian, now that I’ve got your attention.” Justin was surprised how calm his voice sounded. “My name is Westwood. Justin Westwood. I’d like to hear you say it.”

  Brian did his best. Through his broken teeth it came out, “Ussin Esswood.”

  “If I hear you call me anything but that again,” Justin said, “here’s what’s going to happen. Because you’re such a big, tough guy, I’m not going to fight fair with you ever. You’re going to be walking down the street, nice and relaxed, maybe even with a girl if you can get one to look at you again now that you’re uglier than shit and your dick’s gonna be broken for a while. And what I’m going to do is take my gun out, the gun I’m going to carry at all times now, and bring the butt down on the back of your head and crush your fucking skull. Do you understand?”

  Brian managed to nod his head and say, “Ah unnersan.”

  “Good,” Justin said. “I’m glad.”

  Chief Leggett came rushing out of his office then, saw Justin standing over one of his young cops, saw his other young cop, Gary, standing several feet away, paralyzed, his mouth open in dumb shock.

  Jimmy Leggett looked up at Justin Westwood, looked back down at the floor.

  “You better clean yourself up,” he said to the terrified Brian. “You’re a pathetic mess.” And to Justin Westwood he said, “Maybe you should take the rest of the day off.”

  “I was just leaving,” Justin said.

  As he gathered up the papers off his desk, shoving them into his small satchel, and took the gun out of his drawer, making sure that Brian saw it, Justin realized something that surprised him. Since his wife and daughter had died, he had felt, almost every minute of every day, as if he were choking to death. There was a weight on his chest and his breath came in short, shallow bursts. He could not take in much air. When he went to that first shrink, the one the force had insisted he go to, he had told her that he hadn’t been able to breathe since it had all happened. She asked him what air meant to him. That was her exact wording. At first he hadn’t understood what she was asking, he wanted to say, “This isn’t a fucking abstraction here—I can’t breathe!” But he thought about her question for a few seconds, then he said, “Life. Air is life.” She had nodded and said, “That’s right. That’s exactly why you’re having trouble breathing. You can’t let any life back into you.”

  He accepted what she said. It made sense. It didn’t help, though, not a bit. But he believed that she was right.

  What surprised him now, as he walked back out onto the streets of East End Harbor, was that, for the first time in so many years, he did not feel that heavy pressure in his lungs. His chest was rising and falling in a slow, deep rhythm, letting air in, easing it out.

  Justin looked down at the knuckles of his own right hand, saw that they were speckled with drops of Brian’s blood, and he thought: I’m breathing again.

  11

  Justin drove into Weston, Connecticut, exactly three hours and fifteen minutes after he left East End Harbor. On the ferry ride across the sound, he sat in his car, never even got out to lean over the railing and take in the fresh air. While he sat, he didn’t listen to the radio, didn’t read the newspapers. He just stared at a small spot on the windshield, stared through it really, trying to make sense of all the pieces of information he’d managed to put together. William Miller’s age. The murder of Susanna Morgan. The disappearance of Wallace Crabbe. He tried to keep his thinking as linear as possible, tried to keep his mind open to any and all possibilities that might pop into his head. None of that mattered. He came up with no connections, no logical conclusions. When the ferry landed on the Connecticut side of the water, he had exactly as many explanations as he’d had when the trip started: none.

  He consulted his fold-out map, basically figured out how to get to Old Post Road, but when he filled up the gas tank of his four-year-old Honda Civic, he decided to play it safe and ask for specific directions. It didn’t take him long after that befor
e he was on the rural-sounding Old Post Road, which turned out to be a decidedly suburban-looking thoroughfare. A few blocks later, he was in front of the address he had for Edward Marion. It wasn’t a house or an apartment building. It was a fairly large office building in the middle of a small strip mall. Although it was not what he was expecting, he realized he was not surprised.

  There was no Edward Marion listed on the tenant directory in the lobby. Nor did the security guard know the name. The phone-company information showed that the number Susanna Morgan had dialed was in room number 301. The directory had that office being occupied by a company called Growth Industries, Inc. Justin asked the security guard what he knew about the company and the answer, also unsurprising, was absolutely nothing. Justin then asked the guy what his name was. He half expected the same answer: I don’t know. But this one the guard knew. He said his name was Elron.

  Justin wondered why Elron was called a “security” guard, because when he asked if he could go up to the third floor and Growth Industries, the answer was, “Why not?” So he took the elevator up, walked down the hallway until he came to a door with the right number and the name of the company on it. He rang the buzzer and, when nobody answered, knocked loudly. Still no answer. Justin stuck his ear against the upper part of the door, which was beveled glass, but heard nothing. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. At three-thirty in the afternoon on a weekday. Either Growth Industries was not a very well supervised company or …