by Sue Grafton
I turned it off and set the tape machine aside. I reached into the box again. Tucked down along the side, I found ammo for the 9mm Smith & Wesson Mickey’d given me for a wedding present. There was no sign of the gun, but I could remember how thrilled I’d been with the gift. The finish on the barrel had been S & W blue, and the stock was checked walnut with S & W monograms. We’d met in November and married the following August. By then, he’d been a cop for almost sixteen years, while I’d joined the department in May, a mere three months before. I took the gift of a firearm as an indication that he saw me as a colleague, a status he accorded few women in those days. Now I could see there were larger implications. I mean, what kind of guy gives his young bride a semiautomatic on their wedding night? Impulsively, I pulled open my bottom drawer, searching for the old address book where I’d tucked the only forwarding information I’d ever had for him. The phone number had probably been relinquished and reassigned half a dozen times, the address just as long out of date.
I was interrupted by a knock. I hauled my feet off the desk and crossed to the door, peering through the porthole to find my landlord standing on the porch. Henry was wearing long pants for a change, and his expression was distracted as he stared out across the yard. He’d turned eighty-six on Valentine’s Day: tall and lean, a man who never actually seemed to age. He and his siblings, who were respectively eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety-five, and ninety-six, came from such vigorous genetic stock that I’m inclined to believe they’ll never actually “pass.” Henry’s handsome in the manner of a fine antique, handcrafted and well constructed, exhibiting a polish that suggests close to nine decades of loving use. Henry has always been loyal, outspoken, kind, and generous. He’s protective of me in ways that feel strange but are welcome, nonetheless.
I opened the door. “Hi, Henry. What are you up to? I haven’t seen you for days.”
“Thank goodness you’re home. I have a dental appointment in”—he paused to glance at his watch—“approximately sixteen and three-quarter minutes, and both my cars are out of commission. My Chevy’s still in the shop after that paint can fell on it, and now I discover the station wagon’s dead. Can you give me a lift? Better yet, if you lend me your car, I can save you the trip. This is going to take awhile and I hate to tie you up.” Henry’s five-window butter-yellow 1932 Chevy coupe had suffered some minor damage when several paint cans shuddered off the garage shelf during a cluster of baby earthquakes late in March. Henry’s meticulous about the car, keeping it in pristine condition. His second vehicle, the station wagon, he used whenever his Michigan-based sibs came to town.
“I’ll give you a ride. I don’t mind a bit,” I said. “Let me grab my keys.” I left the door ajar while I snagged my handbag from the counter and fished out the keys from the outer compartment. I picked up my jacket while I was at it and then pulled the door shut behind me and locked it.
We rounded the corner of the building and passed through the gate. I opened the passenger side door and moved around the front of the car. He leaned across the seat and unlocked the door on my side. I slid under the wheel, fired up the ignition, and we were under way.
“Great. This is great. I really appreciate this,” Henry said, his tone completely false.
I glanced over at him, making note of the tension that had tightened his face. “What are you having done?”
“A crown ’ack ’ere,” he said, talking with his finger stuck at the back of his mouth.
“At least it’s not a root canal.”
“I’d have to kill myself first. I was hoping you’d be gone so I could cancel the appointment.”
“No such luck,” I said.
Henry and I share an apprehension about dentists that borders on the comical. While we’re both dutiful about checkups, we agonize over any work that actually has to be done. Both of us are subject to dry mouth, squirmy stomachs, clammy hands, and lots of whining. I reached over and felt his fingers, which were icy and faintly damp.
Henry frowned to himself. “I don’t see why he has to do this. The filling’s fine, really not a problem. It doesn’t even hurt. It’s a little sensitive to heat, and I’ve had to give up anything with ice—”
“The filling’s old?”
“Well, 1942—but there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Talk about make-work.”
“My point exactly. In those days, dentists knew how to fill a tooth. Now a filling has a limited shelf life, like a carton of milk. It’s planned obsolescence. You’re lucky if it lasts you long enough to pay the bill.” He stuck his finger in his mouth again, turning his face in my direction. “See this? Only fifteen years old and the guy’s already talking about replacing it.”
“You’re kidding! What a scam!”
“Remember when they put fluoride in the city water and everybody thought it was a Communist plot? Dentists spread that rumor.”
“Of course they did,” I said, chiming in on cue. “They saw the handwriting on the wall. No more cavities, no more business.” We went through the same duet every time either one of us had to have something done.
“Now they’ve cooked up that surgery where they cut half your gums away. If they can’t talk you into that, they claim you need braces.”
“What a crock,” I said.
“I don’t know why I can’t have my teeth pulled and get it over with,” he said, his mood becoming morose.
I made the usual skeptical response. “I wouldn’t go that far, Henry. You have beautiful teeth.”
“I’d rather keep ’em in a glass. I can’t stand the drilling. The noise drives me crazy. And the scraping when they scale? I nearly rip the arms off the chair. Sounds like a shovel on a sidewalk, a pickax on concrete—”
“All right! Cut it out. You’re making my hands sweat.”
By the time I pulled into the parking lot, we’d worked ourselves into such a state of indignation, I was surprised he was willing to keep the appointment. I sat in the dentist’s waiting room after Henry’s name was called. Except for the receptionist, I had the place to myself, which I thought was faintly worrisome. How come the dentist only had one patient? I pictured Medicaid fraud: phantom clients, double-billing, charges for work that would never be done. Just a typical day in the life of Dr. Dentifrice, federal con artist and cheater with a large sadistic streak. I did give the guy points for having recent issues of all the best magazines.
From the other room, over the burbling of the fish tank, which is meant to mask the shrieks, I could hear the sounds of a high-speed drill piercing through tooth enamel straight to the pulsing nerve below. My fingers began to stick to the pages of People magazine, leaving a series of moist, round prints. Once in a while, I caught Henry’s muffled protest, a sound suggestive of flinching and lots of blood gushing out. Just the thought of his suffering made me hyperventilate. I finally got so light-headed I had to step outside, where I sat on the mini-porch with my head between my knees.
Henry eventually emerged, looking stricken and relieved, feeling at his numbed lip to see if he was drooling on himself. To distract him on the ride home, I filled him in on the cardboard box, the circumstances under which it originated, Mickey’s paranoia, the John Russell alias, and my own B&E adventure at Ted Rich’s place. He liked the part about the dog, having urged me repeatedly to get one of my own. We had the usual brief argument about me and household pets.
Then he said, “So, tell me about your ex. You said he was a cop, but what’s the rest of it?”
“Don’t ask.”
“But what do you think it means, his being delinquent with his storage fees?”
“How do I know? I haven’t talked to him in years.”
“Don’t be like that, Kinsey. I hate it when you’re stingy with information. I want the story on him.”
“It’s too complicated to get into. Maybe I’ll tell you later, when I’ve figured it out.”
“Are you going to follow up?”
“No.”
“Ma
ybe he got lazy about paying his bills,” he said, trying to draw me in.
“I doubt it. He was always good about that stuff.”
“People change.”
“No, they don’t. Not in my experience.”
“Nor in mine, now you mention it.”
The two of us were silent for a block, and then Henry spoke up. “Suppose he’s in trouble?”
“Serves him right if he is.”
“You wouldn’t help?”
“What for?”
“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to check.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Why not? All it’d take is a couple of calls. What’s it going to cost?”
“How do you know what it’d cost? You don’t even know the man.”
“I’m just saying, you’re not busy … at least, as far as I’ve heard … .”
“Did I ask for advice?”
“I thought you did,” he said. “I’m nearly certain you were fishing for encouragement.”
“I was not.”
“I see.”
“Well, I wasn’t. I have absolutely no interest in the man.”
“Sorry. My mistake.”
“You’re the only person in my life who gets away with this shit.”
When I got back to my desk, the first thing my eye fell on was my address book lying open to the M’s. I flipped the book shut and shoved it in a drawer, which I closed with a bang.
4
I sat down in my swivel chair and gave the carton a shove with my foot. I was tempted to chuck the damn thing, salvage the personal papers and dump the rest in the trash. However, having paid the twenty bucks, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It wasn’t so much that I was cheap, though that was certainly a factor. The truth is, I was curious. I reasoned that just because I looked through the box didn’t make me responsible for anything else. It certainly wouldn’t obligate me to try to locate my ex. Sorting through the items would in no way compel me to take action on his behalf. If Mickey’d fallen on hard times, if he was in a jam of some kind, then so be it. C’est la vie and so what? It had nothing to do with me.
I pulled the wastebasket closer to the box, pushed the flaps back, and peered in. In the time I’d been gone, the elves and fairies still hadn’t managed to tidy up the mess. I started tossing out loose toiletries: a flattened tube of toothpaste and a shampoo bottle with a thin layer of sludge pooled along its length. Something had leaked out and oozed down through the box, welding articles together like an insidious glue. I threw out a hodgepodge of over-the-counter medications, an ancient diaphragm, a safety razor, and a toothbrush with bristles splayed out in all directions. It looked like I’d used it to clean the bathroom grout.
From under the toiletries, I excavated a bundle of junk mail. When I picked up the stack, the rubber band disintegrated, and I plunked the bulk of it in the wastebasket. A few stray envelopes surfaced, and I pulled those from the among discarded magazines and dog-eared catalogs—bullshit from the look of them: a bank statement for an account I’d closed many years before, a department store circular, and a notice from Publisher’s Clearing House telling me I’d been short-listed for a million bucks. The third envelope I picked up was a credit card bill that I sincerely hoped I paid. What a disgrace that would be, a blot on my credit rating. Maybe that’s why American Express wasn’t sending me any preapproved cards these days. And here I’d been feeling so superior. Mickey’s payments might be delinquent, but not mine, she said.
I turned the bill over to open it. Stuck to the back was another envelope, this one a letter that must have arrived in the same post. I pulled the second envelope free, tearing the paper in the process. The envelope itself bore no return address, and I didn’t recognize the writing. The script was tight and angular, letters slanting heavily to the left, as if on the verge of collapsing. The postmark read SANTA TERESA, APRIL 2, 1972. I’d left Mickey the day before, April Fool’s Day, as it turned out. I removed the single sheet of lined paper, which was covered with the same inky cursive, as flattened as bent grass.
Kinsey,
Mickey made me promise not to do this, but I think you should know. He was with me that night, sure, he pushed the guy, but it was no big deal. I know because I saw it and so did a lot of other people whoer on his side. Benny was fine when he took off. Him and Mickey couldn’t have connect after because we went back to my place and he was their till midnight. I told him I’d testify, but he says no because of Eric and his situation. He’s completly innocent and desperetly needs your help. What difference does it make where he was as long as he didn’t do it? If you love him, you should take his part insted of being such a bitch. Being a cop is his whole life, please don’t take that away from him. Otherwise I hope you find a way to live with yourself because your runing everything for him.
D.
I read the note twice, my mind blank except for a clinical and bemused response to all the misspellings and run-on sentences. I’m a snob about grammar and I have trouble taking anyone seriously who gets “there” possessives confused with “there” demonstratives. I didn’t “rune” Mickey’s life. It hadn’t been up to me to save him from anything. He’d asked me to lie for him and I’d flatly refused. Failing that, he’d probably concocted this cover story with “D”—whoever she was. From the sound of it, she knew me, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember her. D. That could be Dee. Dee Dee. Donna. Dawn. Diane. Doreen … .
Oh, shit. Of course.
There was a bartender named Dixie who worked in a place out in Colgate where Mickey and some of his cop buddies hung out after work. It wasn’t uncommon for the guys to band together to do their after-hours drinking. In the early seventies, there were frequent watch parties at the end of a shift, revelries that sometimes went on until the wee hours of the morning. Both public and private drunkenness are considered violations of police discipline, as are extramarital affairs, failure to pay debts, and other scurrilous behavior. Such violations are punishable by the department, because a police officer is considered “on duty” at all times as a matter of public image and because tolerating such conduct might lead to similar infractions while the officer is formally at work. When complaints came in about the shift parties, the officers moved the drink fests from the city to the county, effectively removing them from departmental scrutiny. The Honky-Tonk, where Dixie worked, became their favorite haunt.
At the time I met Dixie, she must have been in her mid-twenties, older than I was by four or five years. Mickey and I had been married for six weeks. I was still a rookie, working traffic, while he’d been promoted to detective, assigned first to vice and then to burglary and theft under Lieutenant Dolan, who later moved on to homicide. Dixie was the one who organized the celebration for any transfer or promotion, and we all understood it was just one more excuse to party. I remembered sitting at the bar chatting with her while Mickey sucked back draft beers, playing pool with his cronies or trading war stories with the veterans coming back from Vietnam. At eighteen, he’d served a fourteen-month combat tour in Korea, and he was always interested in the contrast between the Korean War and the action in Vietnam.
Dixie’s husband, Eric Hightower, had been wounded in Laos in April 1971, returning to the world with both legs missing. In his absence, she’d put herself through bartending school and she’d worked at the Tonk since the day Eric shipped out. After he came home, he’d sit there in his wheelchair, his behavior moody or manic, depending on his medications and his alcohol levels. Dixie kept him sedated on a steady regimen of Bloody Marys, which seemed to pacify his rage. To me, she seemed like a busy mother, forced to bring her kid to work with her. The rest of us were polite, but Eric certainly didn’t do much to endear himself. At twenty-six, he was a bitter old man.
I used to watch in fascination while she assembled Mai Tais, gin and tonics, Manhattans, martinis, and revolting concoctions like pink squirrels and crème de menthe frappés. She talked incessantly, hardly looking at what she did, eye
balling the pour, spritzing soda or water from the bar hose. Sometimes she constructed four and five drinks at the same time without missing a beat. Her laugh was husky and lowpitched. She exchanged endless ribald comments with the guys, all of whom she knew by name and circumstance. I was impressed with her bawdy self-assurance. I also pitied her her husband, with his sour disposition and his obvious limitations, which I assumed extended into sex. Even so, it never occurred to me that she would screw around on him, especially with my husband. I must have been brain-dead not to notice—unless, of course, she was inventing this stuff to provide Mickey with the alibi that I’d declined to supply.
Dixie was my height, rail thin, with a long narrow face and an untidy tangle of auburn hair halfway down her back. Her brows were plucked, a wispy pair of arches that fanned out like wings from the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were darkly charcoaled, and she wore a fringe of fake lashes that made her eyes jump from her face. She was usually braless under her T-shirt, and she wore miniskirts so short she could hardly sit down. Sometimes she veered off in the opposite direction, donning long granny dresses or India-print tunics over widelegged pantlets.
I read her note again, but sure enough, the content was the same. She and Mickey had been having an affair. That seemed to be the subtext of her communication, though I found it hard to believe. He’d never given any indication he was even interested in her, or maybe he had and I’d been too dumb to pick up on it. How could she have stood there and chatted with me if the two of them were making it behind my back? On the other hand, the idea was not entirely inconsistent with Mickey’s history.
Before we’d connected, he’d been involved in numerous affairs, but he was, after all, single and savvy enough to avoid emotional entanglements. In the late sixties, early seventies, sex was casual, recreational, indiscriminate, and uncommitted. Women had been liberated by the advent of the birth control pill, and dope had erased any further prohibitions. This was the era of love-ins, psychedelics, dropouts, war protests, body paint, assassinations, LSD, and rumors of kids so stoned their eyeballs got fried because they stared at the sun too long.