I'd Know You Anywhere

by Laura Lippman

  And as Eliza headed to the stairs, she was reminded that Iso was not the only liar in their family.

  By the time she reached the phone, it had stopped. She glanced at her watch: 2 P.M., on a Sunday. She did not think Walter would have broken the rules, at least not so quickly. Over time, she could imagine him becoming careless, forgetting what he was supposed to do, or no longer caring. But not on this, his third call. A wrong number? How could one know unless the phone was answered? Why hang up?

  “I thought it was going to be Homeland Security,” Albie said wistfully. “I thought we were going to be told to evacuate. That would be exciting at least.”

  “I think,” Eliza said, “we can come up with something to do that might be almost as exciting.” They spent the afternoon making cupcakes, with much emphasis on decoration. Even Iso, denied the television, joined in, and eventually Peter. They ruined their appetites, filling up on cream cheese frosting and miniature cinnamon disks and squiggles of pressurized decorating icing, straight from the can. Their appetites destroyed, they ended up driving over to Five Guys for a late supper of hamburgers and fries, passing the very mall that had cost Iso her freedom. Eliza saw Iso cast it a wary glance, as if the mall itself was the source of her problems. In a sense, wasn’t it? Whether it was the apple in Eden, the Roy Rogers on Route 40, or Bonnie Jean, betrothed to another in a village where there was no chance of meeting someone new, and no chance that the love of one’s life might ever disappear—in the end, wasn’t it yearning that led one astray, the pining after something or someone that had been denied?

  Iso’s punishment was to end the next day, and Eliza found herself wishing that she might commit a new infraction in the remaining hours, resulting in another week of forced companionship with her family. Hadn’t she noticed how much fun they’d had? Didn’t her sides ache from laughing at her father’s antics with the frosting, the froth of family jokes that had carried them through dinner and then to Rita’s, as if there had never been all those cupcakes? That night, as she tucked in Albie, he said: “Can we do that every Sunday? Cupcakes and Five Guys and Rita’s?” She understood. She felt the same way. But unlike Albie, she knew how hard it was to replicate a perfect day. Wasn’t that the story of yet another movie?

  Back in her room, she took Iso’s phone from the nightstand. Tomorrow, at breakfast, she would have to give it back to her, and the wall would go up again, separating Iso from the family.

  The phone rang—but not the phone in her hand, the one that sat by itself, dedicated to one caller and one caller only, a caller who had been told never to call on weekends or evenings. It rang once, twice, then fell silent, like someone poking her in the back and running away.

  Part IV

  WHO’S ZOOMIN’ WHO?

  Released 1985

  Reached no. 7 on Billboard Hot 100

  Spent 23 weeks on R&B/Hip-Hop Charts

  29

  BARBARA LAFORTUNY SAT OUTSIDE the Baltimore train station, parked in the line reserved for those waiting, staring idly at the enormous man/woman statue with the glowing purple heart. Purple heart made her free-associate—from war, and the honors given for valor, to the old Baltimore thrift store by that name. When she first started teaching, Purple Heart was a terrible taunt used by the children in her class about wearing clothes from there.

  But ultimately the statue made her think of her and Walter, the way they intersected. They were close enough now that they even squabbled like an old married couple. Certainly, Walter had the capacity to exasperate her like no one else on God’s green earth. He was secretive and a control freak to boot, an almost valiant temperament for a man on death row, who controlled nothing in his life. Every time they made a plan—every time—he changed it on her. First he said, Go slow, don’t rush, don’t worry. She’ll come see me and then I’ll bait that hook. Now he had decided just as arbitrarily to jump ahead several moves, just like that, no explanation.

  Yet Barbara had already set Plan B in motion, at Walter’s insistence, and there was no calling it back. So here she was, parked outside Penn Station on a sunny October day, waiting for the Amtrak from Philadelphia. She frowned at a driver idling in the drop-off lane, which was clearly marked, ignoring the line of cars backing up behind her, the chain reaction of problems she was causing. She should be in the waiting lane, like Barbara, or parked on the traffic circle. Barbara hated people who didn’t follow the rules. She gave her horn a little tap, tried to get the driver’s attention, but the woman was clearly an expert at tuning out the world. Barbara got out of her car and walked over, rapped on the woman’s window, forcing her to roll it down and acknowledge Barbara’s presence.

  “You’re in the wrong lane,” she said to the driver.

  “I pulled in by accident and I’m only going to be a minute,” the woman said. “People can still get around me.”

  “Not that easily, and traffic is backing up behind you clear to St. Paul Street. Just pull around the circle and you can get in the correct lane to wait.”

  “Do you work here?”

  Barbara wasn’t one to be derailed by irrelevant questions. A person didn’t have to work somewhere in order to insist on civility and order. “You really should pull around.”

  “And you should mind your own business.”

  Barbara took off her sunglasses, which not only allowed her to make eye contact, but also showcased her scar, that phantom smile. She wasn’t deluded enough to think it made her look tough or intimidating. But she believed that it announced that she had lived in this world, that she knew things others did not. “I’m sure you think you’re the special case, that you have all these rationalizations for behaving as you do. But you are one person inconveniencing many, and there’s ultimately no way to rationalize that. Is your presence in this line a matter of life and death? Will someone suffer if you do what everyone else is doing, without a fuss?” Even as Barbara was speaking, cars were pulling around, honking and squealing, the drivers making irked faces. They seemed to lump her in with this woman, think she was part of the problem. But now that they were in a standoff, pride was involved. Pride—someone else’s—had almost killed Barbara. Still, she couldn’t back down.

  “I will take down your tag number,” she said. “And make a complaint. Did you know that citizens can do that? Complain to the MVA about other motorists’ bad behavior?” She wondered as she said this if her threat might be true. It should be true, and that was good enough.

  The woman looked balefully at Barbara, put her car in gear, and lurched forward, almost running over Barbara’s foot in the process. You would think that cars that had been stalled behind her might show Barbara a little gratitude for breaking up the bottleneck, but they just drove furiously past, dropping off their passengers with no acknowledgment of Barbara’s efforts for them. She dashed across the lane to her own properly parked car, but even before she could open the door, she saw her visitor coming out of the station, a colorless, meek-looking man in a sports jacket and a homburg. She recognized him by his tentativeness, the wary, unsure glance of a person being met by someone he doesn’t really know. She flung up an arm, waved him over.

  “Ms. LaFortuny?” he asked.

  “Mr. Garrett,” she said, shaking his hand. “I’m such a fan.”

  Now that was a lie. She was really piling them up today. She and Walter both considered Garrett’s book a joke, a travesty. But he might be useful, if deployed correctly, and wouldn’t that be a great joke on him?

  “How was your trip?” she asked.

  “Uneventful,” he said. “I guess that’s all one can ask for. I can’t believe government subsidizes that service.”

  She knew she shouldn’t argue with him, but she hated that kind of knee-jerk critique. “I believe the northeastern routes make money for Amtrak. Besides, this country needs more rail service, not less.”

  “The covers were torn on half the seats,” he said. “And there was no coffee in the café car.”

  “Do you want a c
up of coffee? There’s a Starbucks not even three blocks from here—”

  “No, I’m fine. I just think that’s outrageous on general principle.”

  So it was going to be that kind of day.

  She drove toward the county, taking him on a tour of the Lerners’ old neighborhood, driving into the state park, circling back to the now rather worn-looking neighborhood where Maude Parrish had lived. He claimed to have seen these sites before, but Barbara doubted him. Garrett was a lazy man, according to Walter, content to sit in a courtroom and read official records but reluctant to initiate anything on his own. He had never spoken to Walter’s sister, for example, never even tried as far as they knew. (Thank God, given her feelings, but still, how hard would it have been?) He hadn’t even been particularly dogged about getting to Walter, or his lawyer. But that way, he didn’t have to deal with all the messy contradictions. Long before the Internet and blogging, Jared Garrett had the thumb-sucking incuriousness of a person who can’t be bothered to muddle his theories with fact. He now kept a blog on cold cases, throwing up his wildly speculative ideas willy-nilly. His grammar was suspect, and as best as Barbara could tell, he couldn’t even be bothered to spell-check half the time.

  They stopped for a late lunch in Clarksville. They were only a few miles from where the Lerners lived. She wondered if Garrett had even gleaned that much information, which was available via property records.

  “Vegan?” he said with dismay, studying the menu.

  “You’ll never know. I ate here before the switch and found out that most of the entrées I liked were vegan all along.”

  He ordered the chili, which Barbara knew to be absolutely delicious, but seemed glum about it. He was probably not much older than Barbara, but he had a bowling ball of a gut and a terrible pallor. Why did people treat themselves so horribly? Barbara was well aware that she had the great gift of leisure, that it was easy for her to go to yoga class and shop the farmers’ market and choose healthful restaurants, but this man was clearly making no effort to take care of himself. She thought of Walter, struggling to maintain his health in prison. She had sent him books with basic yoga instruction and he had adopted a vegetarian diet despite much protest from prison officials, who wanted to honor dietary needs only for religious or medical reasons. Fine, Walter had said, I’m a Muslim now. Put me on the vegetarian diet that you give them.

  “Ms. LaFortuny—”

  “Barbara.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude and I’m sure you mean well, but when you approached me and said you had significant new information to share, I expected more than a tour of places I saw twenty-some years ago.”

  “Things change. I thought it might be helpful for you to revisit places, see them anew.”

  “Helpful if I were writing about the Walter Bowman case, but I’m not. I devote my time to cold cases now.”

  “There are those who think they can link various cold cases to Walter Bowman.”

  “Yes, and I’m one of them. But unless Walter wants to give an interview before his execution—?”

  She took a bite of her roasted corn quesadilla, sipped her tea. “Well, he might. Walter’s talking a lot these days.”

  “To other journalists?”

  She forced herself not to smile at Garrett’s sense of himself as a journalist. He was an accountant for the state of Pennsylvania, and he hadn’t published a book for at least fifteen years. Nothing he had written was even in print.

  “No, not other journalists.” She lowered her voice. “To her. Elizabeth Lerner.”

  His shock was gratifying. “Why?”

  She gave a mystified shrug. “He doesn’t tell me everything. I just know he added her to his call list and they’ve been speaking regularly.”

  “I always thought—I said—that things between them were much more complicated than anyone wanted to admit. People criticized me, but she did have multiple chances to escape.”

  Barbara almost felt bad. Engaging Jared Garrett’s sordid imagination was like teasing an animal or a small child. Too easy to be fair. And she honestly didn’t want to cause the woman pain, but she was their only hope. To save a life, to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice—why, anything was permissible. Elizabeth Lerner had nothing to be ashamed of. Unless she let Walter die, and then she was a killer, more cold-blooded than any death row inmate.

  “And you know where she lives, her phone number? Do you think she would talk to me?”

  “No,” Barbara said, relieved to be back in her usual world of blunt, tactless candor. “I mean, Walter has her phone number, but that doesn’t mean I do.” Another white lie. “Besides, I don’t think she would talk to you now, because she’s still keen that no one know her whereabouts, her past. Perhaps if Walter goes, however—”

  “If? I didn’t think there was much doubt.”

  “I think it’s important to leave the mind open to possibility. Certainly, there’s no harm in hoping.”

  “Elizabeth Lerner.” He shook his head as if he had seen a celebrity, albeit one he didn’t particularly admire. “Her parents threatened a libel suit against me. They even talked about an injunction.”

  “They were her parents,” Barbara said. “Of course they felt protective of her.”

  “Do you have kids?”

  “No,” Barbara said. “I never married, not that I needed a husband to have children. But I don’t like children much.”

  “Weren’t you a teacher? I mean, I know you had a horrible run-in with one student, but before that, did you like them?”

  “I don’t remember, but—no, I don’t think so. I liked my subjects, government and history. I thought they were important, and I wanted to share them with others. But I wasn’t drawn to teaching because of a blanket love for children. I accepted children as a necessary condition. You?”

  “Me? I never was a teacher.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “No. My wife and I—it didn’t happen for us, and we accepted that. God’s will, and all.”

  “You didn’t want to adopt?”

  He lowered his voice, although there was no one in the restaurant to hear them. “No, never. You do what I do, you learn some things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About adoption. In crime. Those kids are damaged.”

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous. There’s no empirical data to support that. Death row is full of men who were raised by their biological parents. Biological parents who beat them or mistreated them, in most cases. Some of the men I’ve met would have been better off if they had been adopted.”

  “You think having bum parents is a reason not to execute someone?”

  “Yes, in fact, I do. But then, I don’t think there’s anything that supports the state’s right to murder. Killing is wrong or it isn’t. If it’s wrong for an individual to take someone’s life, it’s wrong for the state. The state doesn’t steal from thieves—”

  “It seizes money. It exacts fines.”

  “That’s not the same thing. The state doesn’t sexually assault rapists. Why is it only with homicide, and only a particular type of homicide, that we insist on this kind of justice?”

  “Walter Bowman did some pretty horrible things.”

  “Yes, he did. He’d be the first person to tell you that. And he accepts that a lifetime in prison, with no chance for parole, is fair.”

  Jared had abandoned the chili and was picking at the corn bread that accompanied it.

  “Look, I can’t promise anything,” Barbara said. “But there’s a possibility that Walter will give you an interview. Walter and Elizabeth. But you have to be patient.”

  “How do I know you can deliver either one of them? Why should I believe that you even know where Elizabeth Lerner is?”

  “I’ll show you after lunch.”

  30

  “SO WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN up to?” Walter asked Eliza. It was a natural question. So natural it seemed even more unnatural.

  She found hersel
f tempted to tell him about their perfect Sunday. Of course, she would not. She would not speak of her children to Walter, ever, and, so far, he had the good sense not to inquire about them. Besides, it would have been insensitive to prattle on about her happiness, cruel and taunting. That, of course, was part of the appeal. It would have been a way of saying, indirectly: I am where I am, I have what I have, because I am a good person at heart. You are where you are because you’re bad. Just because I was dragged into your life for almost forty days doesn’t make me bad, too.

  But the more pressing need was to have the conversation with someone, anyone. She had tried to engage Peter on the topic, but satisfactory husband that he was, he was a man and not one inclined to wax poetic about a day of cupcakes and movies. Vonnie had no patience for such conversations, and Eliza’s own mother often ended up talking about how difficult Vonnie was when Eliza spoke of her trials with Iso. As for friends—she had yet to make any. People were friendly, but they seemed to think she was reserved. Funny, because Eliza had been considered ebulliently capital A American during her London years, and now her countrymen—countrywomen?—seemed to find her cool, detached. Or perhaps she had yet to make friends because most of the parents she met were in Iso’s peer group, where Eliza was probably known as the mother of the subtle bully. Maybe, in retrospect, she should have overlooked Iso’s lie about the mall if only to form an alliance with that friendly-seeming mother.

  And here was Walter, someone who knew her in a way that almost no one did. With the exception of her parents and Vonnie, there was no one left in her life who had ever called her Elizabeth. She remembered being sixteen, filling out the papers for her new school. “Why can’t I change my name?” she had asked her parents. “Legally?” her father asked. “I suppose it could be done.” “No, I mean, just change it, call myself something else.” “Bureaucracies are bureaucracies,” her mother said. “Your name has to match the name on your birth certificate or they won’t enroll you.” “But I could shorten it, say it’s something else, or use my middle name.” “Of course you can,” her mother said.