Duplicate Keys

by Jane Smiley

  That made her think of Ray Reschley’s father, who, Ray said, was building a pair of windmills, one on top of the house and the other on top of the garage. He had gotten rid of the second car and filled half the garage with batteries to store the excess power. Average wind speed in Rochester, said Ray, was 12.8 miles per hour. Ray was a tinkerer, too, and as long as Alice had known him, he had been refining some project. Now he talked about selling his apartment and finding himself a top floor place. Average wind speed on the West Side was nearly ten miles per hour. He could find himself something with three bedrooms and have plenty of space to store the batteries. Alice wondered if he had the money for it, and then she wondered how much money he had. In that sense, Ray had obviously done better than any of them, no Hamlet, but a technical Horatio whom Craig, the very image of a Hamlet-to-be, had convinced to drop out of optometrist school. Now one of the most dependable sound men in New York, Ray earned more outfitting studios and working for record companies than any number of handsome guitar players. So what if his life was a confusing round of sexual passion and frustration, no domestic homosexual bliss but repeated cravings for men who didn’t crave him. In a world of beauties, Ray, with his pink skin, pointed fingers, tiny feet, and swelling middle, was not even pretty. For the past year or eighteen months, he had found himself a new crowd, or so he said. Unlike most peer groups, this one carried knives, razor blades, even guns. Ray did not introduce them to any of his old friends, and Alice didn’t often think of them. Once, angry, Craig had called them Ray’s “imaginary playmates.” Craig, in fact, had teased Ray a lot over the years, even after Ray’s work for him had become a kind of noblesse oblige. Alice thought of Ray’s remark that he had loved Denny and “even Craig, most of the time.” He probably did.

  They had all known each other for so long! Julie Zimansky had first whispered to her that this guy Ray Reschley kept calling her up all the time almost sixteen years before. Two years after that, Susan had lived down the corridor from Alice her first semester in college, and Christmas of that year, Susan had introduced her to Denny and his adopted brother, Craig. During her junior year, she had met Jim Ellis on her own, but he rapidly joined the group, and that summer the band had formed, stretching to include Noah Mast and his dog, Fred, both already graduates, since Fred accompanied Noah to classes and even into restaurants. When Fred was hit by a car, the whole group mourned, and when Rya came along, the whole group groaned, but eventually expanded to include her, like any family with marriageable children. When Jim ran off with Mariana, he lost all his friends as well as his wife, and Alice sometimes wondered if that might not have been his hidden purpose all along. He called them on Christmas and said everything was just great, like a dutiful prodigal son, but they only heard third or fourth hand about the stillbirth of Mariana’s baby. Alice looked out the window to where the woman in the bonnet was tramping down her flower bed—Impatiens—and began again to panic. How was it that they had jogged along from day to day, from dinner to dinner and gig to gig and apartment to apartment never comprehending the dangers around them? Why did Denny hand out keys to his apartment, why did Craig sleep with Rya and sample speed and heroin on the Coast, why did Ray flirt with wielders of knives, how did ten thousand dollars become so debased a sum that Craig and Denny didn’t even worry about owing it, and how was it that this life seemed still continuous with the rest of their lives, and the lives of their mothers and fathers on the slow, spacious northern plains? Even Craig spoke of the death of his parents as a strange anomaly, not a symptom of some evil reality. Yes, they died, but numerous aunts, uncles, and friends flowed into the breach, and that kindly, God-loving and Godfearing, happily populous family, the Mineharts, enveloped him, adored him, admired his edgy difference from themselves. “Oh, that Craig!” was what Mrs. Minehart said ten times a day when Alice spent the weekend there once. It was as if they had rolled into Minneapolis and then into New York without ever losing the sublime Midwestern confidence that if you left the doors unlocked while you slept, the neighbors down the road might stop by and drop off the tools you needed to borrow. If they had grown up in New York, would they have been more wary of the dangers or more tempted by them? The drop from the middle class that was a little slope in Rochester was a precipice in New York City. How had they not known that? Unlike some of the others, Alice had never spoken contemptuously of the middle class. A job, an apartment, a washing machine, some money to spend, these were goods, not evils.

  Alice stood up and stretched, thinking of her job, her apartment, her washing machine, her spending money. Of course they were secure, of course they were. Ray and Susan and Noah and Rya and all the rest of them had no claim on her tight little life. Whatever the police did or Ray’s friends did, the library would go on, employing her to catalogue and do reference. But as she thought of them one by one she loved them one by one, yearned to embrace them, to take each on into her tight little life and divvy up the library proceeds, share out the rooms, feed and embrace and reassure. Briefly she fantasized some fending off of the police with weapons, but then she looked down on Eighty-fourth Street, at people walking around, going in and out of apartment buildings, people she had seen so often in the last five years that she almost knew them; wanting to stay a part of that bustle, too, she did not know what to think. That was her usual frame of mind now, not knowing what to think. She picked up the phone jack, flipped it a few times with her index finger, then plugged it in. It rang at once.

  PAUSING outside the police station on Eighty-second Street, Susan ran her hands down the front of her dress and said, “How do I look?”

  “Respectable. Neat. Tired.”

  “Still?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Beat.”

  “Don’t worry. You might even like him.”

  “I might.”

  “He ought to love you.” Alice kissed Susan on the cheek for confidence and followed her into the station.

  Detective Honey, whom they had called beforehand, came out to meet them, extending his hand congenially. He reminded Alice of a farmer, a friend of her father who was now dead. As a gesture of affection, he had been in the habit of putting his big hands on Alice’s eleven-year-old shoulders and cracking her back. His hands were like rocks from years of farming, and the pain of his affection hadn’t been eased by his cheery, teasing words.

  As Honey placed the chairs and offered them coffee, as she herself smiled warmly in response to his inquiries, she assumed that he suspected them, innocent as they were, and that if he could get evidence on them of any kind, even the most circumstantial, he would use it against them rather than pursue further investigation. Wasn’t it well known that the police were simply overwhelmed with work?

  “You’ve been in the Adirondacks, Miss Gabriel?”

  “I got back last night.”

  “How was the weather up there? Isn’t this rather early in the season for the Adirondacks?” He looked up at a wall calendar and Alice’s gaze followed his. May 11.

  “The weather was quite good, actually. I can’t afford to go during the season.” Susan finished with a smile, and set her purse on the floor beside her chair.

  “You are employed at?”

  “I manage Chops, on Broadway.”

  “Chops?”

  “It’s a boutique specializing in imported clothing, mostly from France and Italy.”

  “Expensive?”

  “Very.”

  “And you can’t afford to go to the Adirondacks during the season?”

  “I don’t buy my clothes at Chops, either.”

  Alice smiled and bit her lip. Honey chuckled, then settled more deeply, more intimately into his seat and tried again. “You are aware that Miss Ellis here found the bodies?” He smiled at Alice.

  “Mrs.” This time Susan said it. “Yes, she told me all the details. I was hoping that you would have something more to tell me.”

  Alice marvelled that Susan was hardly susceptible to Honey at all, that his very pr
esence didn’t call from her a stream of talk, as it had from Alice, as it did even now, when he attended Susan, and remarks, questions, conciliatory observations piled up behind Alice’s teeth. Honey said, “Let me just get a few facts down here, then I can let you go.” He coughed. “Your name is Susan Gabriel, you live at 523 West Seventy-fourth Street, you manage the clothing store ‘Chops’ at where on Broadway?”

  “Seventy-eighth Street. I’ve been the manager there for about four years.”

  “Before that?”

  “I managed a housewares shop on Seventy-second, near Amsterdam.”

  “Your duties?”

  “Hiring and firing, watching over, but not doing, the books, helping the owners decide what to buy, making daily decisions about damaged merchandise, shoplifting, window design. Maid of all work.”

  “You’ve lived in Manhattan six years, like Miss Ellis?”

  “We came together.”

  “With Mr. Minehart and Mr. Shellady?”

  “And Mr. Mast and Mr. Reschley and Mr. Ellis.”

  “Yes, the other members of the band.”

  “Jim Ellis wasn’t a musician,” offered Alice. “He is my former husband.”

  “A wholesale migration, then?” Honey smiled. Alice could not help smiling with him, but Susan remained sober faced. “In those days,” she said, “it seemed perfectly natural. We lived in Chicago for about a year, and before that we were in Minneapolis.”

  “You have been close friends for a long time, then?”

  “The band formed in the summer of 1968.”

  “There have never been any falling-outs in all those years?”

  “No,” said Susan.

  “What about—” Honey flipped back a couple of pages in his notebook—“Mr. Dale Nolan?”

  “Dale was the original drummer in the band. He moved to California some years ago, to be with another band. He wasn’t a particularly close friend, though.”

  “There was some friction between him and the band?”

  “Some.”

  Honey waited for Susan to go on. So did Alice. She did not, until at last he prompted her. “What sort of friction?”

  “He couldn’t get along with Craig. Craig thought he dragged the tempo.”

  “Did he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And was he successful in this other band?”

  “Very.”

  “More so, for example, than he would have been if he had stayed?”

  “Probably.”

  “But he wasn’t a close friend?”

  “No. He had other friends all along. He saw the band as just a job.”

  “There have been other drummers?”

  “Countless.”

  “How did they get along with the band?”

  “Fine with Noah and Denny. Craig had his ups and downs with them.”

  “The latest is Mr. Jake Zimmerman?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has he been with the band?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “How did you get along with Mr. Shellady, Miss Gabriel?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did you have your ups and downs?”

  “Craig was a very moody person, with a hot temper, but also rather charming.”

  “Did you see much of him?”

  “Yes, he was at our apartment most of the time.”

  “That was a satisfactory arrangement?”

  “We were used to it, and it is a large apartment.” Susan took the long bobby pin out of her hair and replaced it with deliberation. “Do you have brothers, Detective Honey?”

  “Yes, two.” Alice tried to imagine them.

  “Craig was very much my boyfriend’s brother. I had to accept that a long time ago.” She paused, thinking, and then, apparently, decided to go on. “I liked Craig, but I understood his limitations. Denny loved him in spite of them, or maybe because of them, and I had to accept them, too. Denny and Craig were a package deal.”

  “What were these limitations?”

  “His hot temper wasn’t just a hot temper. It was a kind of psychotic interlude. He would become very, very abusive and paranoid. And he couldn’t manage his money very well.”

  “Did he give rein to his temper physically?”

  “If you mean, did he hit people, no, he didn’t. He was very eloquent. He didn’t need to hit people.”

  “Did he take drugs?”

  “Drugs weren’t the reason for his problems. Alcohol made it worse, though, and in the last few years he’s pretty much quit drinking.”

  “What do you think was the reason for his problems?”

  “His parents were both killed when he was twelve, for one thing. I’ve heard that his father had some problems, but I don’t know. They were killed in a car accident.”

  “Mr. Minehart remained loyal to him? To the point of practically living with him?”

  “Craig loved Denny, like everyone else. Denny could calm him down, and he never really got mad at Denny. Craig lived with Denny’s family off and on after the accident, except for a couple of years when his aunts and uncles sent him to a military school.”

  “He didn’t stay there for long?”

  “He attempted suicide, I think.”

  “In other words, Craig Shellady was a very troubled person?”

  “Not exactly. Not day to day. It sounds worse than it is just listing it like this. He was very charming most of the time. Ask Alice.”

  Suddenly both their gazes turned on Alice. She nodded immediately, without thinking. “He was very compelling,” she said, wondering if someone like Honey could understand limitless warmth, limitless oblique and edgy insight. “I can’t describe it.”

  “Did he ever abuse you, Miss Ellis?”

  “Mrs. No. He hardly ever got mad at women.”

  “Sometimes?”

  Alice looked at Susan, who said, “He threatened to kill me once. And there was a woman he was deeply involved with a few years ago who brought it out in him.”

  “Her name?”

  “Iris North.”

  Honey wrote the name down. Alice detected a certain elevation in his level of interest, and said, “She’s dead. She died of a drug overdose about six months after they broke up.”

  “Did Mr. Shellady take drugs?” This time he meant to be answered. Susan inhaled deeply, to Alice’s dismay. Finally, she said, “Sometimes. Once more than now.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Marijuana. Speed for a while in California, and heroin, actually, there, too.”

  “Cocaine?”

  Alice felt Susan’s head turn in her direction, but did not lift her eyes from her lap. “Yes.” She spoke firmly. Alice began to be afraid. Honey shifted in his seat, which creaked loudly. He said, “I understand that the bodies are still at the morgue.”

  “I’ve contacted a funeral home.”

  “Work on them has been completed, so they can be released to you or to Mr. Minehart’s parents any time. May I ask what will be done with them?”

  “I don’t know. The Mineharts are Catholic, but I would prefer cremation. The kind of funeral they want, no one can pay for, I’m afraid.”

  Honey made a little noise of sympathy, then went on, somewhat expansively. “We also have finished with your apartment, Miss Gabriel, and the police lock will come down tomorrow morning. If you would prefer not to clean it yourself, I can give you the names of firms who would do a good job.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for coming over.” He made it sound as if they had had a choice. Alice wished he would chew cigars and snarl at them. Then she might trust him.

  On the street, once again, she was tempted to turn toward Central Park. As if reading her mind, Susan said, “Let’s go to the zoo.”

  It was like coming out of a powerful movie with a date—while yearning to ask what Susan thought, she was afraid to appear so unperceptive that she didn’t already know. To make conversation, because any talk mig
ht lead into the subject, she said, “Ray and Noah will be there in an hour.”

  “Don’t they have keys?”

  “No. You have the only keys to my apartment.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  “Me, too.”

  “They can wait. It’s a nice day.” She fell silent. After a moment, she sighed deeply. Impulsively, Alice put her arm through the other woman’s and drew close to her. At last she could say, gently, sympathetically, “What do you think?”

  “Have you told him about that thing you had with Craig when Jim first moved in with Mariana?” Susan’s arm, which had pressed softly into her soft side, seemed to Alice to grow angular and awkward. Nonetheless, she tightened her grip around it, saying, “That wasn’t a thing. It was just craziness.”

  “Have you told him?”

  “We only slept together three times.”

  “The more he knows, the more chance that he’ll solve the murders.”

  “What would that tell him?”

  Susan extricated her arm, but didn’t say anything. The light changed as they approached Central Park West, and without hesitating they crossed the street and entered the park. When they had walked a short distance, Susan said, “I think the zoo is this way.”