Author: Editor

As soon as they hired me and told me the details of the case, I knew it was going to end badly.  That was as plain as the cultured marble on the law firm’s walls.

 

“We want you to find someone,” Lawyer #1 said.

 

All three of them were lawyers, and partners, in one of the largest and most feared firms in Detroit.  The firm’s name alone was said to instill fear, panic and quick settlements.

 

Lawyer #1 was an older bald guy with the giant skin folds at his forehead that appeared and disappeared with each new expression.  I knew his name, but for safety’s sake I’ll just stick to numbers.  Besides, numbers just seemed to fit these guys better.

 

“And not just anyone,” Lawyer #2 said.  His voice was high-pitched and whiny.  Probably a tax attorney.

 

By the way, I should probably introduce myself.  Naturally I have a name, but I’ll spare you that as well.  Again, that whole safety issue.

 

The important thing for this story is that these guys called me the Garbage Collector, behind my back of course.  There were a lot of fancy private investigators on the law firm’s payroll.  They used them for the white collar crimes, the paralegal overcharging hours, the rich client cheating the IRS, etc.  When they needed a guy who could get the dirty work done for them, though, that’s when they called yours truly.

 

“He’s our partner,” Lawyer #3 said.  He was a short, squat guy.  The only one who wasn’t wearing a suit jacket.  His silk shirt was straining against his chest muscles.  I worried about a button popping off.

 

This is the point where I knew it was most likely going to end badly.  Finding a wayward client is one thing.  Going after a blood brother of these guys was going to be sticky business.  Bloody business, most likely.

 

“He’s developed an unquenchable appetite for an African-Asian prostitute named Hanicka,” #1 said.

 

“Hanicka,” I noted, jotting it down on a notepad.

 

“And Colombian cocaine,” #2 said.

 

“The white stuff,” I said, adding that to the notepad as well.

 

“And a Floridian villa called Jamaican Bay,” #3 said.

 

“The Sunshine State,” I said, putting that down, too, then adding a little sun with a smiley face.  I enjoyed taking notes.

 

“I admire the international flavor of his addictions,” I said, deciding not to bring up the fact that they had already done quite a bit of homework.  Usually, some of that would be left to me.  My warning signals had gone to Code Red.  But honestly, I was already thinking about my fee and a plane ticket to the land of Ponce de Leon.  Anything to get the hell out of Detroit.  The Motor City was bad enough in decent weather.  Now, in February, it had all the charm of a leper colony.

 

“In order to fund his new vocations,” # 1 said, “Our esteemed partner has come up with a clever financing plan.”

 

“He made off with a host of the firm’s confidential materials,” said #2.  “Materials that he’s using for a variety of purposes, chief among them blackmail.”

 

#3 slapped a plane ticket and a check on the mahogany conference table.

 

“Find him and deliver him to the authorities,” he said.  “We’ll make sure the proper officials are notified ahead of time,” he said.

 

“But first,” said #1, “Please carefully separate said materials from our lost brethren and quietly deliver those back to the law firm.”

 

I sneaked a peek at the check.

 

It was triple my usual fee.

 

“One more thing,” #1 said.

 

“We would be remiss if we didn’t include this addendum,” #2 concurred.

 

“Absconding is not our friend’s historical pattern,” #3 said.  “How shall I put this?  Let’s just say he knows how to stay put in a demilitarized zone.

 

Great, I thought.  A vet.

 

“Vietnam,” #1 said, reading my mind.

 

“Green Beret,” #2 said.

 

“Accomplished martial artist, as well,” #3 added.

 

I suddenly felt as if I’d been underpaid.  When you work with lawyers like these guys, it’s not a question of if you’ll take one for the team, it’s only a matter of when.

 

 

The Florida air hit my face like the warm, wet kiss of Life itself.  As I walked toward my rental car, relishing the feeling of the hot sun on my skin, I heard in my head the sound clip from a horror movie:  “It’s alive!”

 

I happily threw my leather jacket in the back of the white Chevy Malibu, rolled the windows down and hit the smooth, pothole-free highway toward a wayward lawyer debauching himself in Paradise.

 

There were several addresses in my pocket, all covering an area roughly 100 square miles.  They were locations Lawyer #4 had used various credit cards, traced by his partners back in Detroit.

 

There was also an anomaly.  One mysterious phone call trace that had taken place some fifty miles from the credit card purchases.

 

The partners had told me they believed their ex was living in the general area of the credit card purchases and that the phone call was most likely made during some sort of trip.

 

Although I agreed with them verbally, I believed just the opposite.  The credit card purchases were most likely done on purpose, an attempt to throw his pursuers off track.  The phone call was the mistake.

 

So I slammed the credit card information into the Malibu’s glove compartment and headed off for the area of the phone call.  It had been made from a place called The Seminole, a bar between Ft. Myers and Naples on the Gulf side of Florida, two hours north of Miami.

 

By the time I got to The Seminole, I was tired, thirsty and pretty sure no one was following me.  I’m not paranoid, but like I said, this case was going to be nasty and it wouldn’t have surprised me if the lawyers back in Detroit had something up their sleeves beside matching Cartier watches.

 

Anyway, I landed at the Seminole and the first beer went down in about four or five gulps.  The second one took about four or five minutes.  The third one was still in my hand when I started thinking about why Lawyer #4 would have chosen The Seminole for the place to make a call.  It was a hole-in-the-wall, non-tourist destination.  Just a few locals, and judging by the amount of mowed grass stuck to their work boots and socks, most of them seemed to be employed in the landscaping business.

 

Had Lawyer #4 been here for a drink?  Dinner?  Had he been golfing all day? Sending out manila envelopes with blackmail materials inside?  Swimming at the beach?  And then he stopped in here on the way…where?

 

When I called the bartender over for Beer #4, I flashed my picture of Lawyer #4.  I love symmetry.

 

He actually considered it.

 

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said.  “Why you lookin’ for him?”

 

“His great aunt died and he’s the only heir.  About fifty large coming his way if I can find him.”  I had to lie.  This guy looked like a Florida native.  On the way over, I’d seen a bumper sticker on a white pickup truck that had read:  “Happiness is a Northbound Yankee.”

 

“What’s your cut of that?” he said, his eyes full of jaded suspicion.  Hadn’t anyone told these guys they’d lost the Civil War?  I made a note to send Ken Burn’s documentary to this guy.

 

“Fifteen percent finder’s fee.”

 

“Nice work if you can get it,” he said as he popped the top on my best friend from Holland, Mr. Heineken.  He walked away shaking his head.

 

Yeah, screw you too, buddy.

 

I moved away from the bar, found a small table and opened up the thin dossier my employers back in Motown had provided me.

 

It was a single sheet of paper with about five single-spaced paragraphs.  Not really anything historical, like his military service record.  Just stuff that would help me find him.

 

Lawyer #4 liked to sail.  He liked to golf.  He liked to play tennis.  Occasionally he fished.  He was a reader.  He liked movies.  Mostly smaller independent films, not Hollywood blockbusters.

 

Nowhere on the sheet of paper did it tell me why such an obviously accomplished man had fallen into drugs and disrepair, so far down the hole that he resorted to crime.  There were usually only a handful of reasons for that descent, all variations of a theme.  Frankly, I didn’t care.  I just wanted to bag him without him bagging me.

 

 

I spent the next two weeks canvassing golf courses, sailing clubs, tennis clubs, marinas, and artsy movie theaters, usually ending up in the vicinity of The Seminole for dinner.

 

Oddly enough, the case broke wide open at a barbershop.

 

I went in, sat down in the chair and the old man started clipping.  I looked down at the ground and saw my still jet black hair clips landing next to the unswept floor’s remains.  My clips were an ink spot in a sea of white.

 

“Do you know how to cut hair that isn’t gray?” I said.  A couple of the old men laughed and then I knew what I’d been doing wrong.

 

After the ten dollar hair cut, it would have cost me seven bucks if I was over 62, I went to an art supply store, got a white art pencil, took out my black-and-white photo of Lawyer #4 and used the white pencil to turn his fine head of hair into a dignified silver mane.  Then I went back over the same rounds I’d been making for two weeks.

 

Two days later at the artsy movie theater, I got a hit.

“Oh, yeah.  He sees just about every movie,” the young lady told me.

 

The next night, opening weekend for a film called “The Willow Weeps,” I set up my stakeout as far as humanly possible from the theater.  After all, this guy had done a reasonably good job of hiding from his former partners.  I didn’t want to spook him by being overeager.

 

Five minutes before eight o’clock, Lawyer #4 arrived.  He had the hooker with him, which made me wonder if he’d leased her for a more long-term arrangement.  I passed the time reading an AARP magazine I’d picked up somewhere.

 

97 minutes later, they came back out and I watched them get into a silver Cadillac.  Following them wasn’t too difficult, despite the preponderance of shiny Cadillacs driven by gray-haired men.

 

They drove to a gated community, which was a problem.  River Oaks.  With a guard and a gate.  Damn.

 

I watched them drive through the gate and I kept going.  I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and hesitated for one brief second.

 

I put the hazards on, popped the trunk, threw the tire iron next to the back tire, climbed the fence and took off through the swampy grass next to the housing development.  I could still see their taillights as they turned into the groups of homes and condos to the left of the gate.  I prayed the community didn’t have super fancy security systems.

 

I made my way closer and watched the Caddy park in front of a small villa.  I emerged from the grass near a play structure, for the grandkids no doubt, and strolled past the villa.  I mentally recorded the number of the villa, then made my way back to the car.  I threw the tire iron back in the trunk and went back to my hotel.

 

The next morning I was back.  It took five cups of coffee and two deposits in the urine bottle before Lawyer #4 arrived for a late morning jog.  He answered my prayers by leaving the compound and heading over to the running trails at the state park.  I got out the necessary gear and waited for him to return to the entrance.  Forty-five minutes later he did.

 

That’s when I shot him.

 

The gun was from my arsenal:  a veterinarian’s rifle with a healthy dose of ketamine.  Special K as the young kids at raves like to call it.

 

Lawyer #4 went down without a fight.  Hey, they don’t call me the Garbage Collector for nothing.

 

I propped him in the passenger seat of my car and put an extra pair of sunglasses on him.  Then I grabbed the subdivision i.d. tag from his fanny pack and drove through the gate directly to the villa.  I put an arm around Lawyer #4 and brought him to the front door – he was quite a load.  I unlocked it and went inside.

 

No one was home.

 

I set Mr. #4 on the couch, went out to the garage and brought some duct tape back inside.  I trussed my quarry thoroughly and set about searching the villa.

 

It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.  It was in a room obviously used as a makeshift office.  There was a computer and next to it and several boxes of documents bearing the name of my employer’s firm back in Detroit.

 

I went through the rest of the house very thoroughly.  No other documents, no other computers.  I detached the monitor from the main body of the computer and carried the hard drive out to the garage.  I beat it into a few hundred little pieces with a rough framing hammer, then poured charcoal lighter on it, carried it in a metal garbage can to the back of the house by the grill and set it on fire.

 

Back in the living room, #4 was coming to.  I carried the boxes of documents down and set them next to him.

 

Charbroiling the computer had made me thirsty so I got a Diet Coke from the fridge, went back to the living room and observed Lawyer #4.

 

Something had been bothering me, and now, watching my prize begin to stir, it started bugging me even more.

First of all, Lawyer #4 didn’t really look like a lawyer.  Not that you can generalize.  I’ve certainly seen them in all shapes and sizes.  It’s just that before I became a p.i., I used to be a cop.  And there’s just something about other guys who’ve either been cops or been in some kind of law enforcement position that sends your warning flags up.

 

Lawyer #4 was sending a few of my flags up.  Way up.

 

His build, for starters.  He was heavy.  Not a giant guy, but big.  And really solid.  Not the kind of Brad Pitt Zone Diet kind of muscularity Hollywood favors.  I’m talking big, hard muscles you get from years of training and/or fighting.  Not necessarily working the Bowflex.

 

Two.  His hands.  Not a lot of scars, but several on each hand, across the knuckles.  They were fighter’s hands.  And I don’t mean fighter as in boxer.  I mean fighter.  On the streets or the back alleys.

 

Again, not a huge red flag, after all, a lawyer could have been a streetfighter from a tough neighborhood who made something better of himself.

 

Still, I had a feeling.

 

I went to the kitchen and got a serrated steak knife, then went back and cut off Lawyer #4’s shirt.

 

The tattoo wasn’t special ops.  It was a prison tat.

 

This guy wasn’t a lawyer.  And he hadn’t been a Green Beret in Vietnam as I’d been told by my employers.

 

This guy was a professional bodyguard.

 

And then it hit me.  That initial feeling of things turning out badly had been more than that.  It had been my instinct telling me I was being set up.

 

I went through the documents in the box.  They were gibberish.  Sheets and sheets of meaningless information.

 

They’d known all along.

 

And now I knew, too.

 

 

I had one shot to find her.

 

They would want to take her out of there as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.

 

I left the bodyguard trussed up, but with the knife close by so he could free himself.  I ran out to the car, threw it in gear and rocketed out onto the highway, thinking they’d watched me watching the bodyguard, knew I was going to take him down while he was jogging.  So they moved in, got her, and got out, leaving me to take the blame once what was left of her body washed up on shore somewhere, whatever the sharks decided not to eat.  And they’re not known for being picky eaters.

 

I used my cell phone to call the marina.  The only marina in the area if you had serious money.

 

I got the receptionist, named the law firm, and said I was a caterer needing to deliver a gourmet picnic basket for the law firm’s boating party.

 

She checked her records.

 

The firm had no boat at the marina.

 

I swung onto 41 South.

 

As I drove, I tried to put myself in the shoes of the cockroaches back in Detroit.  They weren’t going to fly her out for the simple reason it’d be better to kill her down here.  So if they were going to kill her here and dump her body someplace and they weren’t using a boat, they’d probably do it in one other place.

 

The Everglades.

 

I drove ninety miles an hour, approximately.  I figured my odds weren’t that bad.  According to my map, there was only one road to the Glades from here and I figured they had maybe a ten minute head start.  But they wouldn’t want to speed and attraction attention.

 

I notched it up to a hundred, as fast as the piece of shit rental car would go.  And I caught up to them ten miles from Everglades City.  The touching off point for any forays into the swamp.  As soon as I pulled up to the gray Buick, I knew it was them.  Two bullet-headed thugs in suits in the front seat.  The top of someone’s frizzy hair against the bottom of the back window.  She was probably unconscious and bound.  Slumped in the back seat.

 

I dropped back into traffic and followed them to a small, public marina.  They parked in front of the public information area and one of the slabs of meat went into the little building.

 

The other one went around to the trunk of the car.

That’s when I shot him in the back of the neck with the tranquilizer gun.  He took two steps and stumbled, luckily, on the side of the car not visible from the information shack.  So when his partner came out, I shot him in the thigh.  He took three steps and fell on the other side of the car.

 

I hurried out and saw the girl in the backseat.  She was trussed up with nylon ties and a gag.  Here eyes were open.  She didn’t look scared.

 

I didn’t have much time.  I loaded the two guys into the trunk of their car, undid the girl’s ties and walked her back to my car with my arm around her.  I had no idea how many people were in the information building just how much they had seen.  I backed out of the lot so my license plate wasn’t visible.  It might buy me a little more time.

 

Back on 41, I turned right and headed toward Miami.

 

After a few minutes, she sat up a little straighter and looked at me.

 

“Who are you?” she said.  Her voice was firm and low.  A lawyer’s voice.

 

“A former employee of the same firm you worked for.”

 

“Are you going to kill me?”

 

“No.”

 

“Are you going to take me back to them?”

 

“That’s what I was hired to do,” I said.

 

“And?”

 

“And I don’t think I’ll be fulfilling my end of the bargain.  I believe in lawyer’s terms it’s called misrepresentation.”

 

“Are you the Garbage Collector?” she said.

 

“I really hate that name.  But yes.”

 

“Your reputation precedes you,” she said.  She glanced back over her shoulder.  No one was behind us.

 

After a beat, I said, “What do you have on them?”

 

She let out a long sigh.  “Money laundering,” she said.  “For the mob and a big collection of drug dealers.”

 

“Were you blackmailing them?”

 

She smiled, a tired exercise.  “You don’t blackmail these guys.”

 

“So they tried to bring you in, you said no, then you had to get out.  But they weren’t about to let you out.”

 

“No one gets out.”

 

“Why didn’t you go to the Feds?” I said.

 

“I did,” she said, an eyebrow raised.  “They had an agent guarding me but he left for his jog and then they came and got me.”

 

“Oops,” I said.

 

“Now what,” she said as much to herself as to me.

I thought about it.

 

“I have a buddy who makes people disappear,” I said.  “He’s in Arizona.”

 

“I don’t have much money,” she said.

 

“I’ve got some money from the law firm.  I don’t think they’ll be asking for its return.”

 

She smiled just a little bit.

 

“Consider it your severance package,” I said.

 

She gave a slight nod and I turned the car around.

 

Pointed it toward Arizona.

The End

The Seattle area was experiencing rare, oven-like temperatures during the early part of August. The local TV stations were broadcasting similar versions of a “Heat Wave Watch” and FM disc jockeys were frying eggs on sidewalks. The novelty of the extreme temperatures had worn off after the first few days, leaving everyone wilted and cranky. Even the tourists were complaining.

 

At five-thirty in the morning, though, the air was tepid–a godsend for those of us working the crime scene. No cop I know appreciates the scent of a corpse decomposing in ninety-degree heat.

 

“I’m Detective Regina Rand,” I said to the skinny, young man in Kermit-green sweats. “I understand you’re the one who found the body.”

 

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, licking his lips. “I was jogging along here like every morning.” He jabbed his thumb at Seaview Avenue, the four-lane road that trailed alongside Shilshole Bay. “Something in the ditch caught my eye and I stopped and looked and saw this–a girl just lying there.” The man gobbled a deep breath. “I couldn’t tell if she was dead or not but I was afraid to touch her, so I just ran until I found a pay phone.”

 

I had just finished recording his statement when Dr. Wade, King County’s medical examiner, motioned me over with a doughy hand. “Where’s Hartshaw?” he said, referring to my partner.

 

“Praying to the porcelain goddess,” I said. “I think it was a bad batch of tartar sauce at some fancy restaurant.” Resting on my haunches at edge of the ditch just outside Golden Gardens Park, I absorbed the image of the young woman surrounded by a tangle of blackberry vines and wispy weeds. She was attractive from the neck down, her short black skirt and tank top emphasizing a slender, boyish figure and languid limbs. From the neck up it was different story. A gruesome one.

 

“So, what do you think?” I said to Dr. Wade.

 

The medical examiner grunted and wrestled with his waistband. “I’d say someone was pissed enough to strangle her with their bare hands. No signs of sexual assault, though. Looks like she was probably dumped in a hurry.”

 

“Either that, or maybe someone wanted us to find her. Got a time estimate?”

 

“She probably hasn’t been here more than eight hours. There’s an off-chance of picking up a latent print from her neck, but I’m not holding my breath.”

 

I nodded. “When do you think you’ll be able to get to the autopsy?”

 

“I’ll try and get you a preliminary report sometime tomorrow.” He turned away, glanced back. “Hey, if you talk to barfs-a-lot, tell him I’ll take him out for lunch when he feels better. All-he-can-eat fish and chips with plenty of tartar sauce.” The medical examiner walked away, giggling to himself.

 

I studied the dead woman again. Kayla Marie Lawson. Age twenty-one. University of Washington student. A small purse, a Gucci knock-off, had been recovered less than five feet from the body. It contained her driver’s license, student ID card, a tube of Cover Girl lipstick, a box of Altoids, and a wrinkled ten-dollar bill. Robbery could probably be ruled out.

 

A voice called out: “Detective Rand?”

 

I stood up and watched Officer Baumgartner chug toward me, bangs flapping into his eyes. Get a cut, I thought, suddenly irritated. I knew it was my low blood sugar talking. I enjoyed a vision of a hot and fluffy Egg McMuffin. The morning’s phone call had propelled me from bed to car to crime scene with no time in between for breakfast.

 

Baumgartner’s voice replaced my daydream: “Just learned that we got a call at two-oh-eight this morning from an Abby Terlicker. Said her roommate, Kayla Lawson, had disappeared from the X-Factor, that dance club just down the road there.”

 

“How long had the roommate been missing when Terlicker called?” I said.

 

“About four hours is all,” Baumgartner said. “The officer on duty told her to call again this evening if her friend still hadn’t turned up.”

 

“Looks like we’ll be the one making the call.”

 

*     *       *

 

After Kayla Lawson was identified by her mother, who was too distraught to answer any questions, I pulled into the nearest McDonald’s drive-thru. I gobbled McNuggets en route to Abby Terlicker’s apartment. I felt nearly human by the time I arrived.

 

The squat beige building, a ten-minute walk from the University of Washington, mingled with a dozen other cheap-rent apartments and a few scruffy rental houses.

 

Abby Terlicker was sitting on a futon sofa soaking up tears with a wad of tissues. Her nails were painted a metallic green and there was a round, inky smudge on the back of one hand. “I’ve been up all night,” she was saying, “waiting for her to call, trying to get a hold of Max. I had a feeling that something really bad had happened . . .” A fresh wave of tears washed her cheeks.

 

Terlicker was striking, even with her pink eyes and blotchy complexion. Just under six feet, she had strong features and a head of smooth, dark waves. The type of hair I coveted.

 

“Who’s Max?” I said.

 

She snuffled. “Max Bell. He’s Kayla’s boyfriend.” Present tense.

 

“Tell me about last night, Ms. Terlicker.”

 

“Kayla and I left here around nine to go dancing at the X-Factor. Then about an hour later, Max showed up. He wanted to talk to Kayla in private, so they went outside to the patio behind the club. That was the last time I saw her.”

 

“What did you do next?” I asked.

 

“I went and danced with this one guy, and then I watched this ‘Best Legs’ contest. Kinda stupid, all those guys up there showing off.” She attempted a smile and failed. “After that, I started looking around for them. I checked the dance floor, the bathroom, the patio. I even asked the bartender if he’d seen Kayla.” Terlicker’s voice was shaking now. “I thought maybe they went somewhere else and lost track of the time, so I decided to leave. I guess it was around eleven-thirty by then. I was so mad, but I didn’t–” She sighed. “Anyway, when I got home, I called Max’s frat, but they couldn’t find him. When Kayla didn’t call or show up by two, I called the police.”

 

“Anyone else you knew at the club that night?” I said. “What about the guy you danced with?”

 

Terlicker shook her silky tumble of hair.

 

“Was Kayla drinking?”

 

“No, just Perrier.” Her gaze fluttered around the room, landed on me. “She was pregnant. It was Max’s.”

 

“Do you know how far along she was?” I said.

 

“About two months.”

 

“What was she planning to do about the baby?”

 

“She was going to keep it,” Terlicker said. “She knew she wouldn’t be able to give the baby away after carrying it around for nine months, and being Catholic, she was against abortion.”

 

“Did Max know about the pregnancy?”

 

“Kayla told him last week. She had this fantasy of marrying Max and helping him through medical school, and having this wonderful life together as Mr. and Mrs. MD. But Max freaked. Kayla told me he started yelling at her, saying that she was going to ruin everything and if she told anyone about the baby, he’d totally deny it was his. He tried to talk her into getting rid of it.”

 

“How long had they been dating?” I said.

 

“Almost two years. Things got rocky last winter and Max broke up with her. Kayla was a mess until they got back together a few months ago.” Terlicker paused to blow her nose. “You know how some women feel like they always have to have a man around? Kayla was like that. I told her I’d help her with the baby. I love kids.”

 

“How long had you and Kayla been friends?”

 

“Since first grade. We used to fight all the time, but then the teacher made us sit together and we sort of grew on each other.” Terlicker smiled briefly at the memory. “We went through junior high and high school together, and now college. I have no idea what I’m going to do without her now.” Terlicker’s eyes flooded with tears again.

 

“Did Kayla’s mother know about the baby?” I said.

 

Terlicker wiped her eyes. “She guessed that Kayla was pregnant–some weird sixth sense. She said that Kayla was disgracing her father’s memory and that she wasn’t allowed to be in the family anymore. Her mother’s super religious and has always put a lot of pressure on Kayla to be this snow-white angel. It was really hard for her sometimes.”

 

“Was there anyone else Kayla might have been having problems with? An old boyfriend, maybe? A jealous classmate?”

 

“No one,” she whispered.

 

I got a recent picture of Kayla and left Abby Terlicker to her tears, thinking about the boyfriend who felt burdened by the pregnancy and the mother who felt shamed by it.

 

*     *       *

 

Greek Row was only five blocks from Abby’s apartment, so I decided to walk. By the time I reached Max Bell’s fraternity, my shirt was sticking to my back and my hair was a frizzy globe.

 

The exterior of the four-story fraternity house resembled an estate mansion or a fancy boarding school. The brick facing was trimmed in white, the wide porch guarded by twin columns. The impressions of grandeur were erased as soon as I stepped into the beer-scented foyer. The upholstery was ragged, the tan carpeting worn. The only saving grace was the shiny black grand piano that had probably been donated by a rich alumnus as a tax deduction.

 

While a fraternity brother went in search of Max, my thoughts turned to food again. I pined for a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. I would never be able to fast for a political cause, that’s for sure.

 

Several minutes passed before Max Bell appeared. Cute guy. Red hair, blue eyes, freckles. We moved into the living room and I lowered myself onto a stained sofa. I could easily picture Bell as a five-year-old playing cowboys.

 

His reaction to the news of Kayla’s death was immediate. First, his mouth dropped open and a squeak came out. Then he let his head fall into his hands, and began rocking and moaning. Finally, he straightened up and looked at me. His face was the color of notebook paper.

 

“When did you arrive at the X-Factor last night, Mr. Bell?” I said, trying not to think about the origin of the stains I was sitting on.

 

“A little after nine.” His voice was raspy. “We had a disagreement last week and I wanted to talk to her. She wouldn’t take my calls, so–Christ, I can’t believe this! Do you have any idea who did this to her?”

 

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” I said. “What did you fight about?”

 

“Just the usual boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. You know.” He cracked a few knuckles and I winced.

 

“Like about her being pregnant?”

 

His shoulders slumped forward. “You’ve got to understand, when she told me, I was in shock. I mean, we’d always been careful. And what was I going to do with a baby? Then, I don’t know, I was crazy about Kayla and the thought of being a father, well, I decided I wanted to marry her.”

 

“That’s not what I heard,” I said.

 

Another knuckle popped. “What do you mean?”

 

“Abby said you were mad about the baby and wanted Kayla to get an abortion.”

Bell’s voice remained low but his eyes turned frosty. “Abby doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I admit I wasn’t too happy at first. But I would’ve never forced Kayla into doing something she didn’t want to. I loved her.”

 

“So one day you’re upset, the next day you want to be a husband and father?”

 

“You think I’m lying.”

 

I shrugged. “What happened when you got to the club?”

 

“I asked her to marry me. Not very romantic, I know, but once I’d decided to propose, I didn’t want to wait. She’d been so upset.”

 

“Did she accept?”

 

Two more knuckles popped. I wanted to slap his hands. “Well, sort of,” Bell said. “I mean, she said she wanted to think about it.”

 

“When did you last see her?”

 

“Ten-fifteen, ten-thirty,” Bell said. “We didn’t talk very long. She told me she needed to be alone, so I took off.”

 

“What did you do after you left?”

 

“I drove around, just thinking.”

 

“What time did you get home?” I said.

 

“I–I don’t know. I didn’t look at the time,” Bell said. “Listen, I know what it looks like, but I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Kayla. You can’t think that I killed her! I’ll take a lie detector test and prove it!”

 

I ignored his petition. “By the way, Mr. Bell, why did you and Kayla break up last winter?”

 

“It was no big deal. Kayla and I were spending so much time together, it was starting to interfere with school. I’ve got to keep my grades up. We just took a break, that’s all.”

 

I couldn’t help but think there was probably more.

 

*     *       *

 

Checking my watch, I decided to postpone my next meal, low blood sugar or not. I drove north toward Green Lake and was swallowed by a line of slow-moving cars. Likewise, the path circling the man-made lake was clogged with joggers, cyclists and in-line skaters. It was a Friday. Didn’t these people have jobs?

 

Standing on the porch of Elizabeth Lawson’s Craftsman-style house, I rang the bell several times before the woman herself finally opened the door. Short and boxy with gigantic breasts, she bore no resemblance to her lithe daughter. Elizabeth Lawson ushered me into the living room without a word. The lavender walls were decorated with pictures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

 

“Do you feel up to talking?” I asked. I was surprised that she was alone.

 

She nodded stiffly and perched near the edge of the mauve sofa, her posture stick-straight.

 

I sat in a mauve chair facing her. “Where were you last night, Mrs. Lawson?”

 

“What are you implying, Detective Rand?”

 

“I’m not implying anything,” I said. “It’s just a routine question.”

 

“I was home working on a quilt,” Elizabeth Lawson said. “There’s no one who can verify my story, so you’ll either have to take my word for it or arrest me.”

 

“Did you know that Kayla was going to be at the X-Factor last night?”

 

“I knew that she and Abby went there sometimes, against my better judgment.” Her tone was like a serrated knife. “But no, I didn’t know she was going to be there last night. Kayla kept a lot of things from me.”

 

“When was the last time you saw your daughter?”

 

“Sunday,” she answered. “She came for dinner.”

 

“What did you two talk about?”

 

“You don’t have to be coy, Detective Rand. She told me about the baby and yes, I was angry. I raised Kayla to believe that sex before marriage is a sin. Apparently, she wasn’t paying attention. But if you’re suggesting that I would cause the death of my own child . . .” She stood up. “I think you should leave now, unless you have some evidence of my involvement.”

 

Lawson had a decent motive and no alibi. And she was being defensive and uncooperative. Still, I had trouble seeing her strangling her daughter. Arsenic in the tuna casserole, perhaps. But even that seemed a stretch.

 

I slid back into my Honda and headed downtown to organize my thoughts in the form of a report.

 

*     *       *

 

The temperature had dropped to a comfortable seventy-five. Only a thin band of tangerine showed above Shilshole Bay now, the rest of the sky a deep indigo. I crumpled my Taco Time sack into a ball. I wasn’t paid enough to work sixteen-hour days but I often had trouble stopping. Which was one of the reasons my CPA ex-husband had decided to live with his eight-to-five assistant instead of me.

 

Entering the X-Factor, my ears were assaulted by the throbs and wails of an old Prince song, “Erotic City.” Nasty lyrics. I flashed my badge at the doorman, who barely nodded me in as he stamped the hands of two clubbers on their way out. I walked past young men and women standing against carpeted walls, trying to appear interested and aloof at the same time.

 

The bartender, a meatloaf of a guy garnished with gold jewelry, assumed I was another thirsty customer until I explained the purpose of my visit. I didn’t want to keep yelling over the bar, so I gestured to the patio. He nodded and followed me outside. We stood facing the bay. I showed him Kayla Lawson’s picture and mentioned her Perrier order.

 

“When I’m working, man,” the bartender said, “I just concentrate on the drinks, you know? I don’t pay too much attention to the faces behind ’em. And it was busy last night. With the heat and all, it makes going out a lot nicer, you know? Plus it was Ladies’ Night. Half off the cover charge for the chicks. So what’s this all about?”

 

“We’re conducting a homicide investigation.”

 

“Like a murder or something? Whoa.”

 

“Do you happen to remember a tall dark-haired woman searching for her girlfriend?” I said.

 

The bartender played with his rope necklace. “Sounds kind of familiar, you know? Yeah. I think some chick came up, asked if I’d seen a blonde girl around.” He beamed. “Yeah, that’s right. She was crying, that’s how I remember. Does that help?”

 

Gazing at the sky I said, “I think it does, you know?”

 

*     *       *

 

“I had a few more questions for you.”

 

Abby Terlicker slid the security chain and opened the door. “Oh, sure. Come on in.” The apartment reeked of microwave popcorn. “Have a seat, Detective Rand. Do you want some coffee or something?”

 

“No, thanks,” I said.

 

Terlicker curled up on the futon again and hugged her bare legs. “Did you find out who killed Kayla?”

 

“Yes, I think so.”

 

“It was Max, wasn’t it?”

 

I let her words hang there for a few seconds. “Why did you do it, Abby?”

 

She blinked hard. “What?”

 

“You said that you left the club around eleven-thirty. But actually, you left earlier in the evening with Kayla and killed her. Then you went back to the club and pretended to search for her, make an impression on the employees. Otherwise, why would you have bothered getting your hand stamped if you were going straight home?”

 

“What?” She touched the incriminating smudge of blue on the back of her left hand. “No, you’re wrong. Max was the one! Max did it!”

 

“We lifted some fingerprints off Kayla’s neck.” A lie, but she didn’t have to know that. “I’m betting they’re yours.”

 

Terlicker’s face crumpled. She didn’t move for several minutes. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible. “You don’t understand.”

 

I used my gentle tone. “Why don’t you explain it to me, Abby?”

 

“She told me that he’d asked her to marry him and she was going to say yes. I couldn’t believe it. I asked her if we could go somewhere and talk about it, thinking I could change her mind. But when we left the parking lot, she started blabbing about engagement rings and wedding dresses and something inside me–I don’t know what happened. It’s just that after everything we’ve been through, after all I’ve done for her, she was going to trade me for some–some guy.”

 

I nodded, as if I sympathized with her feelings of betrayal. “What happened next, Abby?”

 

A moment passed before she spoke. “I pretended I felt sick and pulled over and the next thing I knew I–my hands were around her neck. Then her face turned red and her eyes were bulging out and when I let go, she was . . .” Terlicker choked on a sob. “Oh God, it was awful. But I didn’t plan any of it, I swear I didn’t. It was an accident! But don’t you see? She was going to leave me!”

 

*     *       *

 

The next morning, I called the Hartshaw residence. My partner’s wife, Sherry Lynn, laughed and told me that Jason was almost back to his old self. “He’s been ranting all morning about suing Under The Sea.”

 

I pressed down the receiver and dialed another number.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hey, Julie, how are you?” I said.

 

“Regina, hi!”

 

“Sorry I didn’t call last week like I’d promised. Some best friend I am, huh?”

The End

…there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman…     –Col. 3:11

 

It was three months after we got married that Cecelia and I walked east on Indian School to the mountains. Summer had come, and we each carried a small backpack with water and food, for we didn’t want to depend on what we could buy.

 

Cecelia was wearing a sleeveless blouse that showed the muscle in her thin arms. Normally she wears sleeves, but today she’d decided to get some sun. “I suppose that with enough exposure I’d burn,” she’d said, “but all it would do is make me darker.” And she’d grinned, her teeth startlingly white in her narrow face.

 

We walked slowly east, passing out of Hoffmantown into the larger Northeast Heights.   We’d talked a little about moving into the far Heights, which we could afford together, but the neighborhood where we lived was quiet; we were near the library, across the street from one park and within easy walking distance of two others without crossing a major road; and two malls were nearby. And paying on a house closer to the mountains would have left us with less ready cash – what I called walking around money and Cecelia referred to as pocket money. I didn’t know if her expression was her own or one from her raising – living in Texas and Oklahoma I’d heard “mad money,” but she’s from Alabama.

 

We’d walked holding hands, but after we crossed Eubank Cecelia took hold of my arm. “Darvin, I’d like you to meet my parents.”

 

“Works for me. I had wondered why we’d not seen ‘em already…”

 

“It’s me, Darvin. I love you, and nothing can change that. But I was scared – I am scared – of what my parents will say.”

 

“About what?”

 

“About you.”

 

“They don’t like private investigators? But that shouldn’t—Oh, that,” I finished lamely.

 

“Yes, that. I love my parents, but they’ve lived poor in Alabama and they’ve little cause to welcome a white man into the family.”

 

“I know you’ve told ‘em that we’re married—”

 

“I told them we were getting married the same day I proposed,” she interrupted.

 

“—and I know you’re too honest to have hidden the fact that I’m white.”

 

“No, I didn’t hide it.   But…”

 

We walked in silence for a few steps, and then I asked, “Have you talked to your parents about us visiting?”

 

“Yes – they’re of two minds about it. They want to meet their son-in-law, but a white man…they’re still trying to digest that.”

 

“But they are trying.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“They sound like admirable people. And they raised you, and that tells me a lot right there.

 

“Look, C, I can get away anytime just now, so if you can get loose from your job, and your parents are willing, I’m ready when you are.”

 

* * *

 

Cecelia’s hometown is a little place called Leanna, on State Highway 125 in northern Coffee County. We took it slow and arrived in the area three days after we left Albuquerque.   We went on past Leanna and stayed the night in Enterprise. I’d spent a week in the area several years ago, and of course Cecelia had visited Enterprise more than once growing up. We looked at the boll weevil monument, and ate supper, and went to bed early hoping to cobble together sufficient sleep before heading up to Leanna in the morning.

 

Alabama is a humid place. We got up the next morning about 6:30 – not because we’d set the alarm, but because neither of us was able to sleep; excitement isn’t compatible with being a log all night. There was a mist drifting by, a mist that had risen from the lawns and fields of moist earth.   I’m a desert rat, and I’d had enough of dripping atmosphere in Texas and Oklahoma.   I didn’t care for this climate, even though it was cool and pleasant enough as Cecelia and I went for a brief walk in the shining mist.

 

It was about 20 miles up to Leanna, so we checked out of the hotel and hit the road just after seven. We figured it ought to take no more than half an hour to drive it – you can’t drive 75 on country roads, and shouldn’t want to. The purpose of freeways is to prevent people from seeing anything interesting, but off the big roads you see all sorts of stuff.

 

In fact it took us a little less than 30 minutes to get there. A few years ago Cecelia had bought her parents a house at the edge of town, enabling them to move off the farm they really weren’t up to anymore. They’d insisted that the house have some land with it, and it was on the northern end of Leanna with a garden behind it big enough to feed several families. It was in sight of other houses, but it had a dirt driveway just like the country.   From the outside it looked neat and clean and well-tended, and it was clear that however much age had limited the Johnstons, they still knew how to work.

 

We’d come in my truck rather than Cecelia’s car, because she liked to rest her hand on mine as I rested it on the gearshift.   I pulled the truck into the driveway and shut off the engine. Cecelia and I looked at each other, and she gave my hand a quick squeeze before we climbed out.

 

As we walked toward the porch a couple came out, he tall and straight and gray, she shorter and plump and drying her hands on her apron. Cecelia ran and hugged the woman and then the man, squealing, “Mama! Daddy!” It was the first time I’d ever heard her sound like a little girl – and I guess for a moment she was, indeed, the little Johnston girl.

 

I came along more slowly, not in any hurry to interrupt the reunion. As I climbed the porch steps I took off my hat. Cecelia turned and took my hand. “Mama, Daddy, this is Darvin.”

 

Mrs. Johnston put out her hand and I shook it, and then the same with her husband. They both had the strong sure handshake of people who’ve used their hands for a long time.

 

As her parents turned and went back inside Cecelia reached up and kissed me. As she did I heard her father say, “At least he’s got manners.”

 

* * *

 

Cecelia spent the morning in the kitchen with her mother, while I served as her father’s gofer. He was working on a balky tractor, something beyond my expertise, and I handed tools and kept my mouth shut. I’m from the country myself, and know how much a flapping mouth can ruin.

 

We were both hot and sweaty when Cecelia came out under the tree where we were working. She was drying her hands on an apron now, and her face was shiny – no doubt she’d been sweating in the kitchen. “Daddy,” she said, “Mama says to tell you lunch is ready.”

 

He grunted at her – he was just then trying to turn a stubborn bolt. Cecelia came and gave me a quick kiss and went back in the house.

 

I had a can of three-in-one oil in my hand, and gave it to Mr. Johnston as he reached for it. He squirted a copious amount on the bolt and said, “We’ll leave that set a while.” He got to his feet, saying, “We’ll wash up at the back faucet.”

 

There was a faucet at the back of the house, raised on a four-foot pipe that had a towel hung over the top. He washed first, and then me. As I was drying my hands he asked in his slow voice, “My daughter sets some store by you, don’t she?”

 

“Yes, sir, she does.”

 

“And you?”

 

“Mr. Johnston, I’m left-handed – very much so.”   I held out my left hand. “And if it would help Cecelia I’d cut off my own left arm, and count it no loss.”

 

He grunted, and led the way inside to lunch.

 

* * *

 

After lunch Cecelia took me out to where she’d grown up. Her parents hadn’t owned the place, they’d been sharecroppers, but to her it had been home until she went away to college. It could never have been much, a shotgun shack with tarpaper on the roof and outside walls, and no paint, but now, abandoned – for it seemed the owner had decided to incorporate the land into his own operation – it was falling slowly down. Cecelia walked around the house, touching the walls as though their decaying tangibility took her back to childhood. I leaned against her mom’s car, which Cecelia had driven, and let her remember.

 

After a while she took my hand and led me across the fields, down the rows between the dark green cotton plants. She held my hand, her face in thoughtful repose. We walked silently to the far end of the field and stopped there, where a patch of woods offered some shade from the steaming sun.

 

“Dirt poor,” she murmured. “I’ve chopped cotton in this field. I’ve picked cotton in this field. I’ve carried water and lunch to my father and brother as they slaved in this field.

 

“I’ve told you I grew up dirt poor.” She stooped, and in her free hand caught up a clump of dark earth, black against the lighter skin of her palm. “Do you know what that means?”

 

I shook my head.

 

“It means that I spent all day during the summer, day after day, barefoot – not because I wanted to go barefoot, but because I only had one pair of shoes and I had to save them for church and school.   It means that for weeks on end this dirt—” she gave the fistful of earth a bitter squeeze “—ground into my skin and drove under my fingernails so that no amount of washing would get it out. It means that we worked like dogs to plant and cultivate and pick the cotton, and maybe after the rent and fertilizer and kerosene and food and everything else, maybe we’d have a little extra for my parents to get me, my brother, and my sister one present each at Christmas.”

 

She was looking fiercely into my face, and her grip on my hand was desperate. She turned over her other hand and slowly opened her clenched fist. The clot of compressed earth dropped between her feet, lost again in the largeness of the field. As I watched it fall I remembered the lines from the Qur’an: “If you are in doubt about the Resurrection, then verily We have created you…from a clot…”   I’m a Christian, not a Muslim, and my memory told me that the clot wasn’t earth, but in some translations the Qur’an is good poetry, and the lines seemed apt. “Do you believe this happened the 60s and 70s?” Cecelia asked me.

 

I nodded.

 

“It’s all foreign to you, isn’t it?” she asked.

 

“Yes and no. I grew up with Coleman lanterns and a party line – the phone was a couple or three miles away – and no electricity, but it was our choice. We preferred to live in Lanfair Valley, rather than where the amenities were. So I know the trappings – but I cannot know the lack of any other choice.”

 

“I want you to know where I came from, Darvin.   It’s the source of my pride, my drive, my determination. If you don’t know that my feet stand on this land, you can’t know me.”

 

“Cecelia, if this earth is the pedestal you stand on, I cannot erect a higher one to place you on.”

 

She gripped me in a ferocious hug. I could feel tears wetting my shirt as she clung to me.   “I love you so much, Darvin.”

 

I held her tightly as I said, “I love you too, Cecelia.”

 

* * *

 

As we finished supper that night Cecelia said to me, “Daddy has elected me to tell you about a family custom. After supper, before we leave the table, someone reads a passage from the Bible. Whoever’s reading chooses the passage – and Daddy would like you to read tonight if you don’t mind.”

 

“I’d be honored, Mr. Johnston. C, would you go grab my Sword, please?”

 

“I’m way ahead of you, Darvin,” she said laughing.   And she reached for the Bible that her father was handing her – my Bible, I saw. I turned to Proverbs, and read from chapter 31, beginning with verse 10 and finishing out the chapter.

 

As I slowly closed the book I looked at Cecelia’s parents. “I chose that passage because I’ve found an excellent wife. You raised a wonderful daughter, and in the few months I’ve known her I’ve come to treasure her.

 

“It’s probably difficult having me for a son-in-law.   But I can only imagine the joy it must be to have Cecelia for a daughter.”

 

Mrs. Johnston got up and began bustling about, clearing the table with much clatter. Her husband humphed and blew his nose, and rose from his chair muttering about allergies. I’m from the country myself; I knew I’d gotten it right, and blew a sigh of relief.

 

Cecelia and I started to help with the dishes, but Mrs. Johnston, remarking that since this was the only honeymoon we’d had she wasn’t about to let us do her work for her, chased us out. Mr. Johnston, reading the paper in the living room, said, “Y’all’d best get up to your room, Cissy. Tomorrow’s Sunday, you know.”

 

So Cecelia and I went upstairs to the room they’d set aside for her when she bought them the house. We showered, and slept well in that place that wasn’t so strange to me after all.

 

* * *

 

For as long as Cecelia could remember her family had been members of Mt. Tabor Missionary Baptist Church.   Even when farming they’d been closer to Mt. Olivet, which was actually in Leanna. Now that her parents lived in town it was a pretty fair drive to the country church, but they still did it.

 

Cecelia had explained to her parents that I didn’t even own, and would not wear, a suit and tie, so they weren’t surprised that I didn’t have one on. Mr. Johnston was of course in a suit, and Mrs. Johnston had on a lavender dress and matching hat. Cecelia had on the black and gold ankle-length dress she’d worn the first time she’d gone to church with me. I had put on my fancy boots, and a fancy shirt in black and red, and instead of the battered cowboy hat I normally wore I carried a really nice brown bullrider that I would put on once we got outside. I was as dressed up as I’d been since the wedding – and that had been the most dressed up I’d been in years.

 

Mr. Johnston’s truck, like mine, wasn’t a passenger vehicle. Mrs. Johnston’s car really wouldn’t work either – it was nice but small. We decided that I’d take Cecelia in my truck, and her parents would go in her mom’s car. They pulled out first, and we followed, though Cecelia knew the way as well as her parents. We were running a bit late, but that didn’t bother me; in the two years I’d been part of a black Baptist church in Oklahoma I’d never once seen the service start on time.

 

And it didn’t. About 10 minutes after the time things got going. There’s nothing like a service at a black church. It’s a whole different culture, one totally foreign to most whites. Yet the Bible is the same, and Christ is the same, and it’s possible to wish that whites would get as excited about their faith.

 

The pastor got to moanin’ during his sermon, and I remembered a discussion Cecelia and I had had several months ago, before we got married. I glanced at her where she sat between me and her parents. There was a slight smile at the corners of her mouth, and I thought I knew what she was thinking. I leaned over and whispered in her ear, “He’s not Tyrone, is he?”

 

Cecelia looked at me, and then her eyes got big and she clapped her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook, and a slight choked sound came from behind her hand.   I’d guessed right, and she was having a hard fight not to laugh out loud. Eventually she got herself under control, but through the rest of the service she kept having to hide a grin behind her hand.

 

The pastor apparently had been a little disappointed by the size of the offering. With a candor that was foreign to white churches, he commented at the end of the service on the amount of the offering, and then brought the service to a close. I had an idea, and looked at Cecelia as we slowly worked our way toward, and then out, the door. She appeared to have finally gotten control over herself – good.

 

You don’t leave a black church in a hurry.   The service is long, and the people visit and visit afterward. It took Cecelia and me quite a while to get outside. When we did she plucked my sleeve and pulled me aside. “Darvin,” she said, her face serious but with a brightness in her eyes that I recognized, “you are an evil man.”

 

“Evil? How?”

 

“You almost made me laugh in the middle of the sermon.”

 

“Me?” I was all innocence.

 

“Yes, you,” she said severely, poking me in the ribs.

 

“I guess it’s a good thing, then, that Rev. Garrison didn’t go ahead and lift an offering.”

 

Cecelia’s jaw dropped…and her eyes got even brighter…and then she clapped both hands over her mouth and hurried around the corner of the building. I could hear imperfectly smothered bursts of laughter.

 

One of the ladies of the church looked toward the sound, and then at me – a bit suspiciously, it seemed. “What’s the matter with Miz ‘Celia?” she asked.

 

I kept my face as solemn as I could. “I think something I said agreed with her.”

 

The lady seemed to remain suspicious but walked away. I stepped around the corner, to find Cecelia with both hands still over her mouth and tears running down her cheeks. I put my arms around her, and she buried her face in my chest, clutched me tight, and slowly got rid of the laughing fit.

 

When she’d finally calmed down she stepped back, wiped her face, and looked at me with her head on one side. “You are an evil man. I love you, but that was just too much. My side hurts!”

 

“I’m sorry, C – you know how crazy I am. I never thought it would do this to you.”

 

“Oh, it’s okay, Darvin. I’ll live.” And she took my hand and kissed it.

 

As I turned to walk with her back to the truck, I saw her father standing there. “It’s been years since I’ve seen my daughter laugh like that,” he said, and turned and walked slowly away.

 

* * *

 

That night Cecelia’s brother and sister came for supper. Albert was a pastor in Dothan, and Bella was a nurse who’d married a doctor and these days worked as a fill-in from time to time. Albert’s wife was Louise, and the doctor’s name was George Franklin. Both spouses seemed at ease with the Johnstons, though they were city people. We all ate like hogs, and everyone tried to forget the color of my skin. Cecelia was the only one who wasn’t awkward about me being white – but they were trying, and that counts for a lot.

 

Both Albert and Bella had to leave right after supper, and Mrs. Johnston sent Cecelia and me out to the porch swing. I sat and pushed the swing gently with one foot on the railing of the porch, and Cecelia curled up beside me and rested her head on my shoulder.

 

“What do you think of Mama and Daddy?” she asked.

 

“They’re good people. Your dad seems a bit stiff, and I’m not sure your mom’s clear on how to treat me, but I’m proud to have them for in-laws.”

 

She held me tight for a minute. In the momentary silence her father came out and sat down in a chair on the other side of the porch, with what looked like a cup in his hand.

 

Cecelia shifted a little against me. “I’m so glad you like them. It’s been so much better than I was afraid it would be. I was so scared, Darvin, that you all wouldn’t get along. You don’t know how scared I was.”

 

“Your parents are too good – too Christian – to ever mistreat me. And even if they did, I’d put up with a whole lot for you. I love you, C, and therefore I could never reject your parents.”

 

“I’m seeing a lot now that I didn’t before.”   As she spoke a pickup cruised slowly past, headed out of town. “I love you, and I love my parents, but it never occurred to me that I would be a bridge; all I could think of was your skin. I like to think that I’m an intelligent woman, but so help me all I could see was your skin.” She clenched her hand in my shirt.

 

“We ain’t none of us perfect, Cecelia. Don’t worry about it; I love you as you are.”

 

The same pickup came back down the road, but this time its lights were off. I dropped my foot from the railing and sat up. “Cecelia, take your father inside, and get him and your mother to the back of the house. Then get upstairs and bring me my gun; when you come down with it, turn off the lights as you go.”

 

Cecelia jerked with surprise, then uncoiled and went to do as I said. I just hoped we had time; unless I was being paranoid, when that truck came back things would get unpleasant.

 

As it happened the truck coasted into the darkening driveway, engine off, just as Cecelia came back out. “Get down!” I whispered as loudly as I dared, and I heard her drop. I rolled out of the swing and crawled toward her. As I took the pistol I told her to stay down, then slithered down the steps and crouched in front of the porch, knowing that as dark as it was now I’d be invisible there.

 

Somewhere in all this I’d heard two vehicle doors close, and now two sets of footsteps came up the driveway. Although the house was in town it was on the edge, and the driveway was long enough that they couldn’t have seen me getting into position, not from where they’d parked down by the road. The nightriders were trying to be quiet, but I’d practiced stealth in the Mojave Desert as a boy, and knew I was more than a match for these two. They didn’t even have the sense to get on the grass instead of walking on the dirt of the driveway. I crept silently to the corner of the porch.

 

“Here’s good,” whispered a voice. Against the faint light that lingered in the sky I saw a figure raise a long gun – a rifle or shotgun – and point it in the air. He shifted slightly and I saw the double-barreled shape – a shotgun then. I turned away just as he fired.

 

The twin thuds and flashes of the shotgun rounds must have scared Cecelia, for I heard a squeak from the porch. I came to my feet, my gun pointing at the dim figures.   My voice was loud on purpose.   “Don’t move! I’ve got a pistol and you’re on private property!” As I spoke I heard heavy footsteps pounding through the house; no doubt it was Mr. Johnston. “Cecelia! Get me a flashlight!”

 

I moved around so that I was behind the two figures. In just a few seconds I felt a flashlight in my right hand; Cecelia’s father must have brought it with him. I held it cop fashion, resting on my shoulder, and switched it on.

 

I still kept my voice loud. I wanted to intimidate these two. “Toss that shotgun into the brush to your left!” He did so. At the same time the other man dropped what looked like one of those campaign signs you stick in the lawn. They hadn’t even had the brains to stick their sign in the ground before shooting off their gun. “All right – back up five steps!” They did.   “Cecelia – pick up that thing and bring it around to me!”

 

As she did, her father came and stood on the grass near me. He was breathing heavily. I realized that my own breath had speeded up, and my heart was pounding a bit. I kept the gun on the two men as Cecelia handed me the object, taking the flashlight from me. It was a hand lettered sign tacked to a three-foot piece of lath. It said, “Stick to your own kind, nigger.”

 

When I spoke again my voice had a new strain in it.   “You two idiots turn around and look at me.” Just then someone – I presumed Mrs. Johnston – turned on the porch light, and we all could see. The men were unshaven, not too clean, and beginning to get scared.

 

“You two had better be glad,” I said, my voice still tight, “that I’m not as stupid as you are. If I were, I’d just shoot you and be done with it.” I took a breath. “Here is the law for you half-baked Kluckers. You stay away from this place, and you stay away from these people. This is my family, and if you come meddling again I’ll see to it that you’re sorry.   This ain’t the 60s, and you ain’t in Bombingham. Now git!”

 

They got.

 

* * *

 

Later, we sat in the living room and came down from the adrenaline. Cecelia’s father had called the sheriff, and between his standing as a solid citizen and my being a former cop – even if it was years ago – the responding deputy took the report seriously. It had been a long time since anything like this had happened in Leanna, and the deputy was embarrassed as well as angry. The south may someday rise again, but it won’t be the same south. The children and grandchildren of the Kluckers are as fervent in supporting civil rights, many of them, as the Freedom Riders were.

 

After we’d sat for a while, Cecelia in my lap slowly ceasing to shiver, Mr. Johnston asked, “You ever shoot anyone?”

 

“Just once. It was in Albuquerque. I’d located a guy who, his ex-wife said, was hiding out to avoid paying his alimony.   Turned out he was also making crank, and he took a pot shot at me as I went up the walk. Before I could think I had my gun out, shooting back. He fired once, and the cops never could find out where that round went. I fired four times – one round went into the ground, one into the wall behind the guy, one into the frame of the window he was standing in, and one into his right shoulder.”

 

“You mean out of five shots only one hit?” He sounded incredulous.

 

“Yeah. It’s one thing to put holes in a target on the pistol range. When the target has a gun it’s something else. I was shaking for an hour afterward.”

 

He held out his hand. “My fingers are still weak.”

 

“I can believe it. That was scary.”

 

“How did you know how to handle it?”

 

“Training and experience. I was a cop for two years, and I’ve been a private investigator now for seven, and I always practice – even if it’s only going over in my head the nearest cover and escape routes. By being prepared, I’m able to react automatically in a pinch.

 

“But pinches don’t come often. I only drew my weapon four times as a cop, and never fired it off the range. As a private guy, tonight was only the second time I’ve had my gun out, and I only had that one shooting.”

 

I could see him mulling it over. Most people don’t realize that getting shot isn’t the daily hazard Hollywood makes it out to be. The police officers’ deadliest disease, as Joseph Wambaugh calls it, isn’t criminal action but suicide.

 

Now he shifted gears. “I heard what you told those punks. You said we’re your family.”

 

“And you are as far as I’m concerned. I love Cecelia, and therefore I care about y’all; she’s my wife, and so y’all are my parents and brother and sister – at least, that’s how I see it.”

 

“I don’t suppose I’ve been a very good father-in-law.”

 

Cecelia stirred, but I quieted her with a kiss.   “Mr. Johnston, I have no quarrel.   I married your daughter without meeting y’all, in a far away place, and on top of that I’m a white boy. I don’t expect you to ignore all that. You just keep on being the kind of father you’ve always been to Cecelia, and you’ll do fine.”

 

He snorted. “Son, after tonight – and that includes what you told Cissy in the porch swing; I heard that, too – you ought not mister me. I guess I’m your daddy, or your daddy-in-law anyway.”

 

I felt Cecelia grab a handful of my shirt, but otherwise she gave no sign. “My parents died when I was just four years old,” I said. “I’d be proud to just call y’all my parents.”

 

And from then on I was “son,” and they were “Mama” and “Daddy,” just as they were for Cecelia.

 

* * *

 

We drove back to Albuquerque a couple of weeks later. The cops had caught the two would-be nightriders – and lectured me about letting them go – and they’d pled guilty and gone to jail. The stiffness and distance that had been there between me and Cecelia’s dad was gone. He still noticed that I was white, but he introduced me as “my son – the one who married Cissy.” He and Mama were great during those two weeks, and with the completion of the relationship Cecelia was happier than ever. And when we go back to Leanna every year, for both of us it’s a visit to our parents.

The End

The telephone rang. The sound, as shrill as the cry of a falcon zooming down on its prey, echoed through the small, shabby house.

“There it goes again, Betty. Been doing it all day. That’s why I asked you to be here.”

 

“Well, answer it, Lizzie. Momma always said it is bad manners to let a phone ring more than three times.”

 

“I know.   You don’t have to remind me of what she used to say. I’ll answer it.” Lizzie Goodwin’s gnarled, arthritic hand picked up the phone. She listened a moment, her head cocked to one side.   “Maggie Lester! I know it’s you,” she shrieked and slammed down the instrument.   Her face was twisted into an ugly mask of rage. The veins in her forehead and neck bulged beneath the surface of her wrinkled skin like thick cords. Her matted gray hair hung in clumps on her bony shoulders.

 

“Who was it?”

 

“Just like before. No one there,” Lizzie snapped. “But I know it was Maggie.”

 

The phone rang again.

 

“Hello, Maggie Lester,” she said before the caller could speak one word. I know it’s you. I hear you breathing. If you call one more time, I swear I’ll kill you.”

“Calm down, Lizzie. Don’t let her upset you.”

 

“Calm down, indeed. That’s easy for you to say. You don’t know what I’ve had to put up with all day. The phone rings, I answer it. No one is on the line. A minute later it rings again. No one is on the line. But I don’t need Caller I.D. or Star 69 to know that it’s Miss Sweetie Pie playing mean tricks on me.”

 

“But it could be just a child playing with the phone. Remember how Momma took a belt to me when she caught me pulling that trick?”

 

“Damn it, Betty, it’s no child playing with the phone. It’s Maggie. She’s lived next door for twenty years and for twenty years she’s always been cheerful, always been helpful — like I don’t know what she’s up to. Like the day she moved in and rang my bell. Said she’d come to introduce herself. Well, I knew she’d come looking for a babysitter to mind her brood of brats. Slammed the door shut in her face, is what I did. And every year I throw out the Christmas fruit cake she leaves on my doorstep.   I know it’s laced with arsenic.   Whenever it snows, she offers to shovel my sidewalk. She says it’s so I don’t get a summons for not clearing a path. But I know it’s so she won’t slip and break a leg. I wish she’d slip and break her neck, is what I wish.”

 

“Don’t be nasty, Lizzie. She is only being a good neighbor.”

 

Lizzie’s lips curled into a feral snarl. “Well, I’d rather be nasty than an ugly old hag like you. You always were the ugly one in the family.” Lizzie turned her anger with her neighbor onto Betty.

“And you were the fresh one,” Betty snapped right back.

 

“Darn tootin’. Fresh as a new laid egg and proud of it. Did I tell you that Maggie’s husband died last year?   The cause probably was sugar poisoning from listening to her sweet talk for forty years.”

The phone rang.

 

“I won’t answer it this time and you can’t make me.”   Lizzie’s voice hovered between rage and hysteria.

 

“You have to answer it. Remember what Momma said about not answering the phone.”

 

Lizzie nodded reluctantly, and picked up the receiver. “Stop it! Stop it!”   She slammed the phone down so hard that a basket of plastic flowers flew off the top of her 13″ black and white television set.

 

“No one there?”

 

“Of course, not. But she can’t fool me. I know it was Maggie. If that phone rings one more time, I’ll kill her. I’d kill her stupid kids, too, if the last one hadn’t moved out years ago.”

 

“Sit down, Lizzie, and don’t do anything foolish. Remember what happened the last time you got all worked up.”

 

“That was a long time ago.” Lizzie’s watery oyster gray eyes strayed to the black and white photograph of a young couple that hung on the flyspecked wall. The man wore a fedora and a three-piece suit. His hand was clasped tightly around the waist of a smiling young woman.

 

“Damn two-timing fool wasn’t worth the trouble.” Lizzie snatched the photograph from its hook and flung it down on the thin worn carpet.

 

“Lizzie!”

 

“Shut up, Betty. I gotta get ready for Maggie’s call.”

 

Lizzie threaded her way through the cluttered living room. Her eyes darted from a desk piled high with unopened mail to a lumpy chair to a battered table. “I know it’s here. Where are you, my darling?” Her voice accelerated to a frenzied pitch, then quickly sifted to a soft coo when her hand reached under a cushion on the threadbare sofa and she touched her prize.

 

“Here you are my sweetheart.”

 

The phone rang.

 

“Be careful, Lizzie. Control your temper.”

 

“Shut up, Betty!”

 

“Hello, Maggie,” she screamed into the mouthpiece. “You wait right there. I’m coming for you.” She slammed down the phone.

 

“Don’t do it, Lizzie.”

 

“Shut up!   Go back where you came from, you old hag.”

 

“But you begged me to come.”

 

“And now I’m telling you to get.”

Lizzie brandished her sensuously cool silver pistol overhead like a saber and stormed through her tiny living room, then she scurried down the sagging front steps and dashed across the lawn that separated the two houses. Her filthy, sweat stained shift clung to her skinny body.

 

“Open up, Maggie. It’s Lizzie. I know you’re in there.” She shouted her diatribe all the while she stormed up the steps to Maggie Lester’s freshly painted front porch. When she reached the top, Lizzie took aim at the image that had appeared behind the metal meshwork.

 

Bang!

 

The loud blast of the single bullet sent a flock of birds into a frenzy of flapping wings that sounded like a hundred hands clapping.

 

“That’ll stop your damn calls,” Lizzie cackled.

 

Maggie Lester lay crumpled on the floor of her vestibule. A smile of greeting was frozen on her face. Thick ribbons of blood stained the front of her freshly laundered white dress.

 

Lizzie ran back across her neighbor’s neatly mowed lawn to her litter-strewn yard and climbed the crumbling stairs to her house.

 

“See, Betty, I took care of Miss Maggie Lester, just like I said I would,” Lizzie shrieked at her image reflected in the hall mirror.

The phone rang.

The End

“Did you get the report yet?” A hint of annoyance rumbled over the phone line.

 

“And good afternoon to you too, Detective.” Great. Detective Steve McMerty was calling me, again.

 

“I’m running out of time to file on this mope, Amy.” He sounded tense. Not that it was unusual. To me, homicide detectives always sounded on edge.

 

“I’m sorry about the delays but we have to wait for the tox screen to get back.   I told you that yesterday, and this morning.” Now I was sounding agitated. I took a deep breath as the avalanche of stress Det. McMerty unloaded onto my lap started, again.

 

Name: Shweta Shaikh.

 

Age: 20

 

Sex: Female

 

Place of Birth: Comilla, Bangladesh

 

Status: one pregnancy, one live birth. A baby girl. Married to Arpit Shaikh, age 31. Living with him and his mother in a small two-bedroom apartment in Rogers Park.

 

Facts and figures spread out in front of me. This had been her life. This had been someone once. Now I waited for paperwork that would link her husband to her death and put him in prison for life, or worse.

 

“Look, this is just another one of them honor killings. These people justify murder if their girls look crossways at a boy.”

 

I harrumphed loudly.

 

“Why are you a bleeding heart for this guy? He snagged some pretty, young thing in an arranged marriage. Brought her over here to be his slave. And when the little missus didn’t give him a boy, he offed her. End of story.”

 

“You do realize it’s just as likely the mother-in-law did it, don’t you?”   This case was not adding up for me the way it had for Det. McMerty.

 

He was giving me the old lecture. I fumbled with Shweta’s paperwork. When I got tired of reorganizing the reports in the manila folder, I started straightening my black hole of a desk.

 

Det. McMerty was waylaying me with the facts of the case again. Right. Boys are highly prized. I straightened my nameplate aligning it with my computer monitor.

 

Right. He admitted this was an arranged marriage. I moved a stack of papers around. A square envelope fell out of the papers and hit the linoleum floor with a thud. I bent down to pick it up, still yessing and uh-huhing Det. McMerty.

 

“Look, I have to go, Detective. I have autopsies piling up over here. When the report comes you will be the first to get it, I promise. Girl Scout’s honor.” I held up my hand and gave him a salute but I was not sure he would have appreciated seeing it.

 

“Listen Amy, no funny gut feelings on this one. It’s a simple point and shoot. Send me that report ASAP, you got it?”

 

“Yup.” I said my good-byes and hung up. Nope, I thought not a simple point and shoot.

 

I was still handling the envelope I had picked up off the floor. I didn’t even have to look at the return address to see who had sent it.

 

Smooth lines of black ink written in elegant calligraphy glared at me. There was only one person on the planet who I wanted to make proud. Mom.   Once again, she crushed me with the simple carefree stroke of her pen.

 

As if her spider-sense tingled at my very thought of her, the phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my seat at the sound.

 

“Hi, honey.” Her voice was melodic like a songbird.

 

“Hi, Mom. I’m in the middle of,” what I was in the middle of I never got to tell her.

 

“Oh, gawd don’t even start to tell me the horrible details. Yuk. I just had lunch. Did you get the invitation?”

 

I was opening it as she spoke. She had made the invitations, organized the party too no doubt. Nothing social happened in our family world that my mother did not have her hands in, elbow deep. The envelope contained a thick, buff colored cardstock. Square with beveled edges. Very fancy. It was for my cousin Bobby’s graduation.

“Yeah, about the invitation. Not that it really matters Mom, but I have an MD. I would appreciate if you put Dr. on the envelope instead of Miss.” This was an old argument. She had started sending all my mail to work instead of my house.   She claimed it was because I was never home. If I spent all that time at work, she said, it was easier to reach me here.

 

Ouch.

 

“Well, but honey, you’re not a real doctor. I mean you don’t see patients.” She prattled on but the sting of her remark boiled my blood.

 

She was still dishing out the guilt about me not being the kind of doctor she could tell her mahjong club about over scones. Nevertheless, I was Amy Miller M.D., I told myself. Deputy Medical Examiner for Cook County.

 

The drone of her voice continued. “Now I can tell people we have a lawyer in the family. Oh and did I tell you Bobby, excuse me Robert, is bringing some of his fellow graduates. He promised they are Jewish and single.”

 

“Ok, Mom. I have to go,” she cut me off again as I knew she would.

 

“Don’t even tell me. Love you.   Oh, get a haircut, maybe some color?   Cover those greys. Ok? Kiss kiss.”   The phone line clicked and then she was gone.

 

A loud beep startled me out of my pity party. The fax machine was spitting out mounds of paper across the room. Red curls flapped against my lab coat as I scurried to it. I secretly loved the sensation of my hair swinging on polyester. My dad ordered this coat as a gift when I had gotten the job here. It had my name embroidered over the left breast pocket.

 

Wearing that coat made me feel just a little more confident every time I stepped into this building. The Cook County Medical Examiners Building sat like a red brick fortress on the corner of Roosevelt and Damen Avenues. Six easy blocks away was the University of Chicago Medical School campus. My alma mater just steps from my door. Further east was the City of Chicago federal holding facility where Det. McMerty and his partner poured over paperwork to condemn Arpit to a lifetime in prison for the murder of his young bride.

 

I flipped through the papers, licking the tip of my index finger to try and unstick the pages. It was July outside. Hot and humid. In here, it was cold. Icebox cold.   My mind snapped back into focus as I found the reports with Shweta’s name on them.

 

Blood lead levels normal. Blood calcium levels normal. That was what I had expected. I sat back at my desk. Now for the clincher, the test that had caused me to send the blood out of house, delaying the report. Her blood arsenic levels.

 

When I first saw the body, a few things stood out to me. Her skin; or partial lack thereof. The color of her skin was off. She was a mottled patchwork of hyperpigmented and hypopigmented areas. It was a strange combination. The mottled effect had given her an almost jaguar-spotted appearance under the harsh autopsy room lighting.

 

Melanosis. Rare stuff.

 

I was starting to add things up in my head. Doing an autopsy was like putting together the pieces of a large puzzle.   Reports aplenty came with the body but I looked at them after I looked at the body. Even though I had techies who prepped and autopsied the body, I still did a lot myself. The body told me one story and the reports told me another. I knew the paper was most often wrong. The body never lied.

 

The melanosis on her skin told me one story. The lesions corroborated it. They had been her cause of death. But they were the marks of a hidden killer lurking deeper. I would make sure I found the real cause.

 

Lesions the size of navel oranges pocked her belly and inner thighs. They were open and ungranulated. She died before they could even start to heal.

 

Some of them were deep enough that the muscles had rotted away from gangrene and white bone peeked out from the black center. I had swabbed the sores, labeling each culture tube. Whatever bacteria were in the sores were in her blood as well. They found their entrance point moving into her bloodstream sending her body into a spiral of septic shock ending in her death.

 

I took hair samples, fingernail clippings, blood samples for toxicology screening and culturing, and urine samples to store. I knew I would find the killer hiding in her blood and there would be evidence of it in her urine too. So the urine was a backup. A precaution in case I needed it.

 

Her blood report sat on my desk as I exhaled a breath I had not been aware I was holding. I leafed through the next page and found the tox screen from the fingernail sample.   The hair sample’s report lay deeper in the stack. I laid them out side by side.

 

Identical triplets.

 

Fruits of my labor. Keys in the lock of Shweta’s life and death. Pieces of a puzzle now made even deeper.

 

Arsenic. It was what I had expected. It was what I had feared. I feared for Arpit. I feared for that little girl whose mother had died a horrible, painful death. Now her father was sitting in jail. The baby was in foster care. The mother-in-law was only here on a visitor permit and was in serious danger of having that revoked.

 

I let my head fall onto my desk, not caring that my foundation was going to rub off on the fax papers.

 

“Hey, no napping on the job.”

 

I bolted upright in my chair at the sound of that rich baritone. My hands covered the reports, scooping them up to my chest. I held them like infants. I suffocated them into my breast rather than lose them.

 

“Bill,” I squeaked.

 

“Amy.” He smiled.   A boyish grin.

 

Shit, I yelled at myself. I was so in trouble. Big trouble spelled with a capital McMerty doled out by his partner.

 

Bill Sanders leaned over my desk. His 6’4” frame blocked out the overhead lights, making shadows dance on my papers.   His hands spread over my disorganized piles. I glanced to his bare left ring finger sitting on top of the invitation from my mother.

 

“What’cha working on?” He leaned in closer so that I could smell the cologne he was wearing. Armani. I loved Armani. Two fingers pinched a corner of the report peaking between my fingers and twisted.   “Shaikh, Shweta. Hmmm. I bet you were just about to fax this over to me, weren’t you?”

 

“Um, yeah. Yes, I was.   I just wanted to put them in order for you. I know how busy you two are. Solving murders, catching bad guys.” Oh god, did I really just say that? I am such a moron.

 

Bill let go of the paper and then proceeded to sit on my desk. Well, it was more like a lean. A long leg covered in black, wool gabardine pants took up the length of my workspace. God, he was tall. The belt holding his gun and handcuffs made a loud clatter as they hit the faux wood veneer.   The part that wasn’t hidden under a mess of papers.

 

“Look, these just came in. Really.”   Bill was giving me his best yeah-right glare. The fluorescent lights made his hair a dull yellow. I knew that when he stepped out into the sunlight it was golden blonde.   I handed over the reports and pointed to the time stamp on the bottom. Ten minutes old, vindicated. I would save the happy dance for later.

 

Bill gave a long whistle as he flipped through the reports. I knew he was coming to the same conclusion I had.   Arpit was doomed.

 

“What is the normal level for arsenic?” Bill thumbed the reports comparing data from one to another. It made me wonder more about detectives really being scientists in disguise. I was such a snob.

 

“Um, it depends on your government. Here, 0.01 mg/L or less.” I just read some article in JAMA about physicians seeing arsenic outbreaks in China, Taiwan and Mongolia. Acceptable arsenic levels could go as high as 0.08mg/L. No one was sure how much was acceptable or tolerable.

 

Arsenic is a funny heavy metal. It naturally occurs in certain rock formations. Ground water bubbles up thorough rocks, or gets filtered through them as it passes to underground wells and aquifers. Depending on your water source, there was always some arsenic in it.

 

The weird stuff was what happened once you ingested it. In the 1700s, apothecaries used mass amounts of the stuff in their snake potions. Even more recently, the miracle leukemia drug Glevik increased potency when paired with arsenic. The stuff was being sold as Trisenox, a new and amazing chemotherapeutic.

 

In some people, small amounts of it caused skin lesions and discoloration.   Later organ cancer and skin cancer appeared. In other people, mass amounts had no side effects. So determining the amount of arsenic that was safe for consumption or exposure was like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack.

 

“So her levels are around 31 mg/L.” Bill’s voice pulled me back out of my daydreaming. “That is a pretty good dose.”

 

“I’d say so.”

 

“So our mope really is the mope.” Bill whistled to himself again. “Can’t believe he would kill his wife just because they had a girl. This is America. They could just have another baby. What’s the big deal?”

 

“Don’t tell me you buy into that racist crap, too?” I was getting really annoyed with this storyline. “So what, you just look at people and know everything about them in a millisecond? How long before you assumed I was just another pampered JAP?”

 

“A what?” Bill just stared at me as I wrinkled my nose in disgust. I knew it made all my freckles bunch together into one big brown smudge.

 

“Look, he is the typical profile for an honor killer. He came here to be a doctor but couldn’t pass the English medical board exams. So he is frustrated and a failure. His mother shows up and gives him the general mother crap. Why aren’t you married? I have a nice girl for you.”

 

“You do that so well.” It sounded snide even to me. Bill gave me a look that I usually give to my mother since I hear that line a lot from her.   My mother’s voice chimed in my head like the Liberty Bell. I have a nice Jewish lawyer for you. So he is short and has psoriasis, don’t be so picky. You know 30 is pushing it for finding a man who will marry you.   “So, what’s your point?”

 

“So, he is a pharmacy technician in an oncology clinic.”

 

I stared blankly at him. I was still trying to figure out why they weren’t putting the finger on the mother.   In all the literature I’d read about spousal murder in India, the overbearing grandma poisoned or burned the daughter-in-law as punishment for having a girl. Her son gets remarried hoping the new wife does better. My thoughts had digressed and Bill was giving me a look.

 

Trisenox, the arsenic compound, was a cancer therapy. Arpit was working as a pharmacy technician in an oncology clinic.   How could he? I shuddered. My belly hurt from all the tension.

 

“Pee!” I jumped out of my chair as if I had been stung on the tuchas.

 

“What?”

 

“The urine.” I was racing through the office towards the door that leads to the sample room. I opened the door to the small refrigerator that looked like the evil twin of the one I owned when I was in college.

 

Behind this week’s samples was a three-week-old jar of urine. It was so beautiful I could cry. I held it in my hands like it was liquid gold. The label confirmed it was Shweta’s.

 

“What are you doing, Amy?” Bill was standing in the doorway watching me gawk over the urine.

 

“Nothing. Maybe everything.” I brushed past Bill heading toward the main hallway. I was on a mission to the Illinois State Forensics Lab, which happened to be just across the street. Lucky for me.

 

Bill was right with me. I walked faster just to antagonize him. He still had the lab reports clutched in his hands. Only now, I realized he had a large manila envelope. The folder contained the evidence they would turn in to the Grand Jury.

 

“Tell me about Shweta. What’s the background?” I had only gotten small bits of the story. I had not really looked at it that closely until this week. This urine could tell me something. If it confirmed arsenic poisoning, then Arpit was guilty and he needed to pay for what he did.

I rounded the corner towards the front lobby. My heels made an important clatter on the asbestos tile floor. Bill was still on my tail.

 

“Like I said, Arpit’s mom came and gave him the ‘I want a grandchild’ guilt so they went to Comilla and picked up a wife. That was March 2005. Arpit and Shweta got married and came back here.”

 

“Where was his mother?” I blew past the security clerk sitting at the front desk. He had seen me do this enough times to know not to question the mad redhead running with fluids across the busy street.

 

“She stayed in her own village. Where are you going?” Bill shielded his eyes from the bright sunlight.

 

“Gas chromatograph.” Ours was on the fritz.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing, keep going.” I was waiting for the light to change so we could cross the street.

 

“They had the baby in January of 2006. Honeymoon baby you suppose?”

 

“Funny, ha ha.” I quipped.

 

“What about the wife’s health since January?” If Arpit was poisoning her with the injectible arsenic, she may have had some health problems out of nowhere. It should have started right after they brought home the disappointment.

 

“No, she was in perfect health after the birth.”

 

“Curious.”

 

“That’s why McMerty and I were sitting on pins and needles for this report. The arsenic in her blood is sky high. Arpit works in and around a ready source of it.   He brings it home, injects her while she sleeps. Poof, dead wife.”

 

“Fine connecting of dots, Detective. Except,” The light changed, finally. We crossed the street. It was just one hundred feet to the door. “Her skin was in such bad shape there was no way I could have seen a puncture mark.   I looked, believe me. Good luck proving he was the one doing the injecting.”

 

Bill opened the heavy outer glass door for me. I had my hands full, after all. We stepped inside the doorway facing the speaker box in the marble wall adjacent to a pair of plate-glass doors. The forensic science symbol, etched prominently on the glass, sparkled in the afternoon sun. A finger print swirl boarded by calipers. An outdated symbol to say the least but one that made me pause and think how far we’ve come in so little time. God, I love science.

 

“Can I help you?” The rental security person’s voice crackled over the speaker.

 

“Dr. Miller with the Medical Examiner’s Office. I want to see Gary Zielinski.”

 

“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Zielinski?”

 

“Well, no. I need to use his gas chromatograph.”

 

The almighty box in the wall clicked. I figured he was calling Gary. Telling him a crazy lady wants to play with one of your machines. I could picture it now; Gary would laugh then let me in.

 

A buzzer sounded and the door popped. Bill grabbed the closest handle opening the inner door for me.

 

An artic blast of air conditioning hit us when we stepped into the hexagonal lobby.   It was hot out and I had not even noticed until now. The security guard sat to my right. Another set of heavy glass doors were on his left. The guest book lay open on the desk. Bill signed us in and got our visitor passes.

 

“So, then what?” I asked stepping through the doors into a long hallway decorated with the same gray marble as the lobby. It glittered in the incandescent lights. When did they get those? We get stuck with fluorescent and they get GE soft white bulbs. That was a crime.

 

“What, what?”

 

“2006, the baby. Then what?”   I was still swimming in the shallow end of the evidence pool.

 

“Oh, she went back to her village in Comilla with the baby to visit family.   She was there for almost 6 months.   She returned with her mother-in-law and has been here ever since.”

 

I just kept moving towards the elevator at the end of the hall. It took us smoothly up to the third floor.

 

Gary was already in the hallway, waving at me when I got off the elevator. His hair was peppered with more white than when I had first met him. His pant size was a little larger, too. He always complained that middle age and desk jobs don’t mix. Close to mid-life crisis or not, Gary was still handsome, with a boyish charm and real comedic sense of timing.

 

Gary and I had bonded over some long nights of watching sci-fi movies while waiting for lab results to come in. Very few men could put up with my intense love for Star Wars.

 

“I have to run a sample through your GC, Gary. Do you mind?”

 

“No, not at all, Amy. Hi, I’m not sure we’ve met.” I had already shoved my way past Gary into the lab.

 

“Oh, this is Detective Bill Sanders. Bill is working on a homicide.”

 

Gary shook Bill’s hand. He let out a long, slow whistle. “It’s all yours, should still be warmed up.”

 

The GC sat on a long counter in the back of the lab. It was actually a series of machines. One was the GC itself. Another held the gaseous material that was going to vaporize my liquid sample. The last machine was a computer interface. The monitor blinked its readiness to receive my sample.

 

Using a syringe, I took a volume of deionized water. I placed the syringe into a small, one-way valve on the side of the machine and injected the water. The machine whirred to life as peaks and valleys suddenly appeared on the monitor to my left.

 

The water sample that vaporized inside the heated coils of the GC threw up their mountain ranges on the display. The temperatures and signature energy changes of the molecules going from liquid to gas phase made crests and troughs at precise locations. Water in every GC gave the same readout, the same signature.   Peaks and valleys in the same patterns told me two hydrogen atoms formed covalent bonds to one oxygen atom.   Water, pure and simple. It was working perfectly.

 

“I sure wish we had this computer when I was back in organic chemistry lab.   That would have saved me hundreds of hours analyzing my data by hand with nothing but a dinky ruler.” Gary laughed at me. He got the joke.

 

The computer analyzed the crests and spit out the chemical structures.   Machines are not infallible, and I am not that trusting. It was good to be able to read the printout myself. Just to double check.

 

Now it was time for my sample. I loaded up a clean syringe with the urine. I held my breath as the GC sucked up the sample and vaporized it in its uncaring machinery. Peaks and valleys blurred across the screen. Bill gasped. It was a messy picture, not the clean and easy readout of pure water. This was a complex body fluid after all. There were nitrogenous wastes from protein digestion, sugars, ketones, other acids, water of course, and arsenic.

The computer spit out the list of compounds in her urine. Most of it was stuff that was not supposed to be in urine.   She had septicemia, her body was going through meltdown when she died. The urine only confirmed that.

 

Gary and I were studying the arsenic compound’s bonding patterns. Bill was looking anxious. I put in another sample of pure water to clear the machine. I had to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing.   A man’s life was at stake.

 

Another sample of urine and the same peaks and troughs. The computer confirmed the arsenic compound. I asked Gary to work it by hand to make sure the computer had the correct structure. I was off to use his internet.

 

“Amy?” An angry sounding tone from Bill’s cell phone interrupted whatever thought he might have had next.

 

I could hear Bill talking to McMerty. It must have been 20 minutes later and I had been surfing the internet like a crazed California beach bum. I furiously printed stacks of documents as Bill stepped in the room.

 

“You had better have something good, Amy. Time is running out to press charges on Arpit. We can’t hold him if we don’t file your written report by 6pm. You’re the only thing between us and evidence.”

 

“Look at this, Bill.” I handed him a stack of papers. The one on top was a report from the World Health Organization. Bill sat down as he perused the printouts. His long legs folded under the too-short table.

 

“Before 2005, Comilla was using one deep well for all its water needs. But that well was not easily accessible to all the surrounding villages. So AquiFund, a not-for-profit group that digs wells in Africa, volunteered to donate 60 tubwells to Comilla and its surrounding area.   It was supposed to be a great day for them. WHO just published a report about Comilla last month. I knew I had read something about groundwater contamination in Asia, but I forgot that they also mentioned southwest Bangladesh.”

 

“What’s your point?” Bill was getting nervous. He flipped through some of the other papers in the pile.

 

“Shweta grew up drinking water from the distant deep well. When she went back, her village was enjoying the prosperity of their new local tubwell. So she drank the water, bathed in the water, and cooked with the water.”

 

“Come on, Amy.” Bill’s voice was going tight. He was not getting it. Gary walked into the room and handed me his evaluation of the chemical structure on a small piece of paper. It was the same thing the computer had given.

 

“Blood screening only shows the heavy metal, arsenic, but not the chemical structure of the heavy metal. Trisenox’s main ingredient is arsenic trioxide.” I flipped papers in the stack and pointed to the chemical structure on the Trisenox FDA approval form. “The arsenic in her blood and urine is not from Trisenox. It’s sodium arsenite, the most common form of arsenic in contaminated groundwater.”

 

“You’re kidding?” Bill leaned back in his chair. He had a strange smirk on his face. I was not sure if he was laughing at me or at how McMerty was going to take this news.   His smile shifted suddenly as he sat upright in his chair.

 

“But the baby was with her. The baby should be sick too.”

 

“No, she was breast feeding. Natural chelation therapy.” I smirked but Bill had missed my joke. “Mother’s milk has high levels of calcium. It prevented the heavy metal absorption. She protected her own child without even knowing it.”

 

“Mother-in-law?” He was quizzing me but I could tell he believed my analysis.

 

“Different village, different well.”

 

“Wow.” Bill was laughing at me now.

 

“Seems like your stereotypical killer isn’t so stereotypical anymore, huh?”   Bill picked up his cell phone.

 

“Steve, I’m with Amy. She’s got some news. You sitting down?” Bill winked at me. His blue eyes were sparkling with an air of mischief as he relayed the information to his partner. He took the GC printout and placed it into his envelope. While he was talking, Bill wrote something on another scrap of paper.   He stood up, shook Gary’s hand and mouthed thanks. He pushed the paper over to me and walked out the door.

I smiled to myself as I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. Arpit had been pigeon-holed. There had been a string of particularly nasty honor killings in Illinois.   I wondered if they saw Arpit, an immigrant with old customs, and an arranged marriage and figured it was the easiest explanation.

 

Ockham’s Razor always said the simplest explanation was the truest.   That Arpit did it was simple enough.   But he hadn’t. Now he could go home to his baby and try to reassemble some kind of life.

 

I thanked Gary for letting me intrude on his day. He remarked how I always had something interesting going on.   We laughed about that and made plans to do a movie night.

 

I floated out of the Forensic Lab. I had trusted my gut and been correct. Now I could do my happy dance. I pranced my way across the street to my office with its cramped, cluttered desk. A bright pink message note lay carefully on top of it. Call mom, it read. I tried a deep breathing technique to calm away the cramp those two words gave my stomach.

 

I brushed the “You’ve Got a Message” paper away replacing it with the one from my pocket. Bill’s strong, clear pen strokes stood out prominently from the computer font. I reread it for the tenth time.

 

“Nice work, Dr. Miller.”

The End

I can’t imagine why I let Gloria talk me into meeting her downtown in the Gas Lamp District — and on a Friday afternoon, no less.

“Traffic’s gonna be friggin’ gnarly,” I remember mumbling to myself as I got into my Volkswagen and headed for the Interstate. I must’ve been crazy. Everybody knows T.G.I.F. is when the San Diego Freeway becomes the slow way, loading up with motorists frantically trying to escape the city for the weekend.

 

Cautiously, I pulled into line and began inching my battered VW up the on-ramp, and a bumper sticker on the flat-bed truck in front of me screamed out in Day-Glo colors: “KEEP HONKING. I’M RELOADING.” My fingers cramped and knuckles turned white as I self-consciously made sure my hands grabbed only the rim of the steering wheel. This was not going to be fun.

 

Remembering my previous encounter with Gloria, she had showed up wearing a tight leather mini-skirt, silver chains, and purple hair with streaks of orange. All right, I’ll admit we were going to a heavy metal concert at Humphrey’s, and the chick was really into it — full on scary. Her skin looked bleached, like she was trying to be a freaked out version of Michael Jackson, and she had stuck a diamond stud in her tongue, making her talk with a slight lisp. Not your average girl next door, maybe a little strange; certainly interesting. Green, blue, orange — I fantasized what color or new form of body piercing she might be into this time. That must be why I agreed. Yeah, sure, maybe her sexy ass had something to do with it, too.

 

Technicolor Gloria said she was going to drive in straight from work. She wanted to do some shopping at that festival marketplace, Horton Plaza, and afterward go to dinner at a small avant-garde French café everyone was talking about, a couple of blocks from there.

To make matters worse, “road rage” was the talk radio subject for the hour. As listeners phoned in their accounts of bizarre experiences with psychotic drivers, I began to carefully scrutinize the people in the cars around me. That’s when my imagination flipped out of control and shifted into high gear.

 

One lane over, the woman in the maroon Lexus could have been the nicest minnow swimming in the office secretarial pool. I figured she was anxious to get home to her Smurf-like tract house in the suburbs. Upon closer inspection, however, her salt-and-pepper frizz and haggard appearance convinced me she was a single mother. I bet Mom was hoping she wouldn’t find the high school football team hanging around her two teenage daughters again when she pulled into the driveway. Without hesitation, she’d take the Smith & Wesson .38 special out of her glove compartment and blow away any car that tried to cut her off. And if she found the acned jocks at her house again, drooling over her ripe adolescent offspring, she might waste them as well.

 

Or check out the yuppie Dot Com executive in the silver BMW convertible that passed me, zigzagging from lane to lane in heavy traffic. His pasty face and slicked-back gray hair seemed to match the color of his roadster. He looked like a dude who may have just shut off the cell phone on his wife, terminating a nasty conversation before it reached critical mass. He’s probably in a hurry to get to a saloon in the Logan Barrio where his sexy Hispanic girlfriend has been waiting for over an hour. Heaven help the unsuspecting motorist who should get in his way.

 

I flipped on my right blinker as I approached the freeway off-ramp that would take me down into the foul, cavernous bowels of the city. In my rear-view mirror a white panel truck, less than a car length behind me, started moving over at the same time. The young driver’s black hair was greasy and spiked. A large ring hung from his left earlobe and he had his right pinkie finger stuck up his nose, digging around like it was a uranium mine. When he saw me changing lanes, his hand quickly dropped and started pounding the middle of his steering wheel. Like, I could have shit my pants! If the idiot hadn’t slowed down he would’ve squashed my Beetle — with me in it. A moment before impact, he swerved and passed me on the left. The second finger of his nose picking hand extended upward, indicating his age and I.Q.

 

As I drove down Broadway, most of the workers in the Government Center were exiting. By now the radio callers had gotten to me, like I was on a bad trip. Chewing on my lower lip until it started to bleed, both hands welded to the steering wheel, I found myself sandwiched in between rows of cars and trucks. We were all bumper-to-bumper, our horns creating a clamor that made me think of a high school orchestra, with seething hormones, tuning up for sex. Convinced “road rage” was breeding everywhere, and the office buildings in downtown San Diego were the incubators, I placed my right hand atop the locked glove compartment, where I knew a loaded .22-caliber pistol resided.

 

“It’s there, it’s right there! So, don’t mess with me!” I cautiously exhaled in a sigh of relief. Thank God — the worst of my commute to the inner city was over — I was almost safe.

 

When I turned to enter the multi-level concrete parking structure behind Horton Plaza, a Mercury Cougar nearly sideswiped me as it careened down the exit ramp. Before I could respond with the appropriate expletive, it accelerated out into the intersection and almost took out a bag lady in the crosswalk. The old woman was struggling with a shopping cart that contained all her worldly treasures, and a caster with a spastic shimmy.

 

“Damn! You just can’t ever let up in this city. You always have to be on guard…” I mumbled as I pulled the little white paper ticket from the toll machine and the entry gate began to rise. It must not have been fast enough for the yellow Toyota behind me, because its horn started honking furiously. I looked into my rear-view mirror and recognized the driver — Technicolor Gloria. She had something in her hand and was pointing it right at me! Like, holy shit!

 

An explosion ricocheted off the hard surfaces of the garage like a 40mm cannon. Technicolor Gloria was shooting at me! I crouched down in my seat and could barely see over the steering wheel.

 

“Honk! Honk! Honk!…” She continued to madly try to intimidate me with her car horn. The sicko was freaking me out. I had to do something, quickly. The woman had gone nuclear!

 

Flooring the accelerator pedal, I drove as fast as I could up the bumpy spiral concrete ramp and turned onto the ‘onion level’ — or was it ‘tomato’? I don’t know — I hated vegetables as a kid. Ah ha, the speed bumps were supposed to slow you down — but not me! Fear took over and became the driving force as I tried to emulate Bobby Unser.

 

My speeding car barely missed a battered Chevy wagon that was backing out of a parking place. Fortunately, the station wagon crunched into Gloria’s front fender. The collision stopped her cold. This was good! Maybe now I had a chance to get away from this lunatic chick. But why was she trying to kill me? My previous date with her had been almost platonic. I didn’t even try to get to first base. We hardly knew each other.

 

When I couldn’t see the Toyota behind me anymore, I pulled into an empty parking stall and slammed on the brakes.

 

“Ka-Wham!” Another explosion occurred right underneath me, and reverberated off the cold rigid gray surfaces.

 

“I’m a dead man!” I cried, as I fumbled with the key to the glove box, clutched the pistol, and struggled to open the driver side door — all the time crouching behind it for protection.

 

Gloria’s damaged yellow Toyota screeched to a stop next to the rear end of my Volkswagen. Cowering, I considered crawling underneath for safety.

 

Yelling obscenities as she got out of her car, she flung her right arm toward me, and I knew I was looking straight down the barrel of a small handgun. Holy shit! My life on this planet was over — I was a goner. I managed to shoot first.

 

She gasped, “Are you crazy?” and crumpled in slow motion to the concrete. Like someone punched the pause button on the VCR, it was all so weird; then reality took over and the movie speeded up again.

 

“God help me! What have I done?” I cried out, and ran to her side. Her body vibrated with a terrible spasm, and an expanding circle of blood, two shades darker than her new flaming red hairdo, discolored her white blouse. It hit me like a rogue wave, her quivering outstretched right arm was laying in the direction of my car. There was no gun! She had been only trying to draw attention to my two pathetically bald; now flat, rear tires.

 

Horrified, I cocked my right arm, threw the pistol with all my remaining strength, and heard it clatter against the concrete like a metallic toy. Running blindly down through the parking structure, I made it out into the fresh air, and staggered headlong into oncoming rush hour traffic. The last thing I heard was the rubbery squeal of tires, followed moments later by the unearthly scream of a siren.

The End

A little black girl skipped along a trail in a small lot crowded with pecan trees and underbrush, skipping and singing songs that only little girls sing.

 

A white man stepped from behind a tree and squatted in front of her.

 

She came to a standstill, backed up a step, and adjusted the straps of her backpack filled with schoolbooks. “My momma told me I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said.

“And I’ll bet she told you not to take this shortcut home,” the white man replied.   He slipped an envelope from his shirt pocket, held it out to her, and said, “I have something to give your momma.”

She stared at his nicotine stained fingernails, dense blades pinching the envelope between them. She held out her hand to take it.

 

He wrapped his hand around her wrist and squeezed. A smile split thin lips to reveal gray gums compacted with tiny, yellow teeth. He said, “Tell your momma I said you shouldn’t take this shortcut again. It wouldn’t be safe.”

 

She focused on those teeth. They were sharp, as if they’d been filed.

 

The white man released her, stood, and disappeared into the trees.

 

The little girl ran along the trail and burst from the lot like a spit seed. Across a narrow street was a row of shotgun houses. She ran passed them, deeper into the neighborhood, until she came to her mother’s building, the last three-story structure in Freedmen’s Town, with a café on the first floor, their home on the second, and empty rooms for rent on the third.   She found her mother in the café, and with a trembling hand gave her the envelope.

 

 

Nadine Maye sat at the kitchen table and stared at neatly

arranged canned goods in the cupboards, waiting.   She heard heavy footsteps on the metal stairway bolted to the outside of the building, followed by a gentle knock on the door. Quickly she opened it.

 

The man standing there was as wide and tall as the doorframe. His weight threatened to rip the stairway from the building.   He wore black denim pants and shirt, and on his feet were black, eel-skin cowboy boots. His head was shaved and glowed with a purplish sheen.

Hallelujah Batts said, “You been axing ‘round for me?”

 

Nadine led him to the kitchen table and they sat across from one another. She related her daughter’s confrontation by the white man, then pushed the contents of the envelope across the table.

 

Batts flicked his eyes to what she was showing him. A faded newspaper article detailed an account of the police finding a young girl’s bones in a field outside Houston, a hole in her skull put there by what appeared to be human teeth marks, perpetrator unknown.

 

Batts’ expression turned hard. He flicked his eyes back to Nadine’s, and said, “What you want me to do?”

 

“Can you watch over her, just until we get organized enough to ¾”

 

“She now cast a big shadow.”

 

Nadine’s body sagged with relief. “I can take her to school.”

 

“I do that.”

 

“Hal, I can’t expect you to ¾”

 

“I said I do that. I pick her up after. I hang close at night. Won’t stop ‘til she safe.” He flicked his eyes to the ceiling. “Might be good idea I stay upstairs.”

 

“Okay, but I don’t expect you to do this for nothing. I’ll pay you —.”

 

“Must be somebody else in the room.”

 

“What?”

 

“‘Cause you ain’t paying me.”

 

“Hal ―”

 

“Heard you doing good deeds for Freedmen’s. Been wanting to help. I take care of May Maye. Call it a donation. You got any idea who send this white man?”

 

She shook her head. “It has to be someone buying up the property around here for pennies on the dollar and knows I’m fighting it. I have most the remaining residents banded together, and we have a City Councilman backing a moratorium on development in here while we see if we can get it declared a State historical site. That way, we can. . .” She shook her head again. “I’ve looked into the identity of the buyers. They’re all corporations with different addresses, no common thread to any of them, no identifiable person’s name.”

 

“Got to be one of ‘em.”

 

“I agree. I don’t think it’s some crazy man picking my baby at random. No. It’s a message.”

 

Batts stood and said, “I be sending him a message back.”

 

 

Early the next morning, in one of the upstairs bedrooms, Batts sat on a chair next to the door, waiting. He wore a black long-sleeved T-shirt, starched blue jeans, and his eel-skin boots. He thought about how Freedmen’s Town was once ten times its size now, back in the forties, the restaurants, the jazz spots, the mom and pop businesses, all established by freed slaves after the Civil War. Houston’s all-white City Council didn’t like that, declared eminent domain, and just took it.

And now somebody else was taking what was left.

Suddenly he jerked the door open.

The startled teenager who was about to knock said, “How you know I was here, Mister Batts?”

 

Batts didn’t reply, ushered him from the hallway into the bedroom and told him of the white man’s threat.

The teenager said, “Who this mouth-breather be?” Talking tough, wanting Batts’ approval, his tough talk belied by his being lead tenor for his a capella group, hoping for the big time.

 

“Don’t know, Tim,” he said, “but I need a posse set up ‘round May Maye’s school.   Get your singing group, watch it from when I drop her off to when I pick her up.” He handed Tim a cell phone. “Keep this wit’ you. You see someone look like this white man, punch this button. It set for my phone. Start this morning. You got two hours to set up.”

 

After Tim left, Batts waited two hours, went downstairs and knocked on Nadine’s door.

 

She was waiting on the other side sporting a new dress. She wasn’t sure why she chose it that morning, but she did, deliberately. She wondered at that as she opened the door and stepped outside.

May Maye followed behind her, ready for school and secure in the knowledge Hallelujah Batts was her guardian angel.   He was so fierce looking, but she’d been told his smile was oh so wide and filled with big white teeth stacked in there like whale bones. She hoped one day to see it.

 

Nadine hugged her daughter and said, “When Hal’s with you, his words are the same as mine.”

 

“Yes ma’am,” she answered with a wide grin.

 

Batts told Nadine about Tim’s posse and said, “After I take her to school, I be out poking around. Then I pick her up. Let’s ride, May Maye.

 

Nadine watched Batts carry her daughter through the door on his shoulders and prayed it wouldn’t be the last time she saw her.

 

 

Batts dropped off May Maye and drove to the Ironworker’s Union Hall. The Ironworker’s key trustee, George Plate, waited for Batts in his small office at the rear. His face was like his name, flat as a plate and wide, his nose mashed close to his face by one too many fists, his skin as thick and black as Batts’.

 

Batts sat on a metal chair in the front of the desk.

Plate said, “’Bout time you showed up. I was fixing to come see you, see if you still alive.”

 

Batts related what was going on in Freedmen’s Town and said, “Came by to see if you been hearing something.”

 

Plate thumbed a few papers on his desk with a thumb the size of a ballpeen hammer and said, “You finally doing something ‘bout that jones you been hauling ‘round for Nadine? Her husband been dead eight years. It be all right you make a move.”

 

Batts said nothing.

 

Plate looked at a framed photograph of his family sitting on the desk’s corner. “Wife saved me from things I don’t think about no more. Hope things work out for you. Now, what I been hearing is some developer out beating the ground for some project downtown. Don’t have much more than that. And rumor is it’s in Freedmen’s Town. That’s why I was fixing to come see you, let you know. Maybe it’s just that. Rumor, I mean.”

 

“No rumor, George. Who rich enough to pull off something like this?”

 

“That’d be Poth DeMard or Greg Munch.   Got their business and home addresses right here.”

 

 

Batts parked in the Transco Tower’s underground parking facility. Munch’s office was on the sixty-second floor, the top one. Batts took the express elevator.

 

The receptionist’s desk had a sign that said, “Return in ten minutes. Please have a seat.” Batts ignored it and walked down a long hallway to a set of mahogany double doors that went to the ceiling, disregarded the anxious-looking woman approaching him, and pushed through the doors.

On the far side, across invisible waves of designer cologne wafting about the room, sat Munch behind a glass desk in the corner.   He was in his late thirties, dressed like an Armani manikin, with a ridge of hair combed out over his forehead to a sharp edge. The face below looked as if it belonged to a man who just stepped out of a peep show.

 

Batts sat in a chair before the desk and said, “You know Nadine Maye?”

 

“I know who she is,” he said, acting as if large, contentious-looking men barged into his office every day. “But I’ve never met her in any sort of business or social environment.”

 

“Don’t mingle with poor folk, huh? Except when you stealing land?”

 

“I beg your pardon, sir. I’ll have you know that I’m prepared to offer a substantial amount for anyone’s property in Freedmen’s Town who chooses to sell it.”

 

“And you know this. I’m Batts, Hallelujah Batts. I be watching what you do in Freedmen’s Town.”

 

“You mean this intimidation routine of yours is about trying to buy property?   You’re crazy.”

 

“Been told that. You say ‘trying?’”

 

“I’ve been trying for some time, but someone always beats me to it.”

 

“Who?”

 

Munch threw up his arms. “A vast right-wing conspiracy, someone abused as a child. How should I know?” His eyes turned sly. “I’ll be glad to pay you well to find out for me.”

 

Batts stood and gave Munch a blank stare, turned and left the office.

 

 

He drove to Tanglewood and parked in the driveway of Greg Munch’s house, a three-story mansion built of solid red brick with white trim.   He rang the doorbell, and within a few seconds Grace Munch opened the door.

 

Batts was surprised not only that she opened the door, but that she married Greg Munch. Her age was beyond the inattention of youth and her carriage said was born full-grown and sophisticated. She turned abruptly and motioned for him to follow, saying, “I’ve been expecting you, Mister Batts.”

 

She lead him through rooms with spare, obscenely expensive furnishings. Furniture wax permeated the air along with a slightly sweet odor.

She stopped at a glass-walled room that jutted off the back of the house. In it was one sofa facing another. Outside the glass was a swimming pool that shimmered like liquid turquoise, untouched by a living body. She sat on a sofa and motioned for him to sit on the facing one.

 

Batts broke the ensuing silence with, “Don’t believe we met, Mrs. Munch.”

 

“No, we haven’t.”

 

Batts waited for her to continue, but when she didn’t, said, “Reason I’m here¾”

 

“The reason you’re here is that you are trying to help Nadine Maye block any developer from taking over Freedmen’s Town.”

 

“Opportunity for me in Freedmen’s Town beside playing bodyguard.”

 

“And what might that opportunity be?”

 

“You tell me.”

 

“You’re fishing, Mister Batts.”

 

“Big pond, plenty room for more fishermen.”

 

“You mean fisherpersons, don’t you?”

 

“Whoever got a pole.”

 

“Is that a double entendre?”

“Don’t know what one of those is.”

 

“I’m sure.   If you’re here to play me against my husband, you’re wasting your time. I don’t care one twit what that twit is doing.”

 

“Buying up Freedmen’s Town, what he doing.”

 

“I said I don’t care what he’s doing, not that I don’t know what he’s doing, or trying to do. Someone seems to be thwarting his efforts, something I find comical.”

 

Batts looked through the glass at the pool, then back at her. “Hear you rich enough for River Oaks or any place you wanna be.”

 

“Oh, I may be moving there soon,” she replied. “Tanglewood is for the nouveau riche, and Grace Munch is certainly not part of that crowd.”

 

“Mister Munch not moving with you?”

 

“You’re a careful listener, Mister Batts. This conversation is finished. You can find your way out, I’m sure.”

 

 

DeMard’s office building was a stand-alone, one-story structure, located next to Buffalo Bayou. A Rolls Royce was parked by the building’s entrance in a wide space reserved for Poth DeMard.

Batts parked next to it, entered the building, and told the receptionist that the Freedmen’s Town sanitation man was there to see DeMard.

 

Thirty minutes later, a small slender man with coarse gray hair and glasses thick as a banded stack of money appeared and said, “Please follow me to my office, Mister Batts.”

The office had so much leather, it smelled like a saddle. They sat on leather sofas across from one another.

 

Batts said, “You know my name how?”

 

“Surely you can deduce how, Mister Batts.”

 

“License plate.”

 

“How sagacious of you,” he said. “Oh, please excuse my manners. Would you like something to drink?   No? Then I hope you will permit me to say that I uncovered some rather interesting elements to your personality, Mister Batts, other than your name. Would you like to hear them?”

 

“I already know.”

 

“Yes. Yes, I suppose you do. Well, it appears your purpose in this visit is to determine my interest in Freedmen’s Town.   But why are you interested?”

 

“You got competition.”

 

“Competition for what one attains is inevitable. Look at Microsoft. Are you here to offer a jolting left hook to my competition? I assure you I can reward you much more than Munch, if that contumely gentleman is your employer. His wife controls the real money, you see. And it’s my understanding that his sexual peccadilloes have earned him her disfavor and his business may be in trouble. Furthermore, my aims are more altruistic than his.   Freedmen’s Town is filled with children.   You do care about their future, don’t you, Mister Batts?”

 

Batts stood, leaned over and said, “And you better, too.”

 

 

Batts drove to DeMard’s house in River Oaks, turned into a driveway a hundred yards in length, and parked in front of a veranda six times longer than his Lexus. He got out and rattled a door knocker in the shape of elephant’s head.

 

A woman half DeMard’s age appeared and said, “Hello, I’m Sossi. You must be Mister Batts. My husband said he wouldn’t be surprised if you paid me a visit.”

 

“That so?”

 

“Yes, and I must say what he told me isn’t hyperbole.   You are quiet an imposing sight.”   She held out a hand. “Come, please. We can have tea in the tea room.”

Batts walked beside her. His footsteps echoed through the long hallways and massive rooms like gun shots.   The air smelled vacant.

 

Sossi said, “Normally our butler answers the door but we gave him time off for doing such a good job. He’s such a dear.”

 

“Mine, too,” Batts said.

She led him into a room where a pot of tea was set in the center of a wooden coffee table flanked by four high-back chairs.

Batts ignored her breasts pouring from the top of her dress as she poured tea and leaned over the table to hand him the cup.   He accepted it and said, “Need a tour guide, this

place.”

 

“Oh, we live only in certain rooms,” she said, flapping her hand over her shoulder in a dismissive motion. “The rest of them are for sundry guests or for entertaining. Do you do much entertaining in your home, Mister Batts?”

 

“I look entertaining to you?”

“That depends upon the category of entertaining you mean.” She sat her cup on the table, picked up a Danish from the tray, licked off the icing with a fully exposed tongue, and said, “This isn’t a social visit, is it?”

 

“If your husband tell you ‘bout me, why you think that?”

 

“There are all sorts of ways to conduct business, Mister Batts.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him.

 

“You saying you handle company business, not your husband?”

 

“Of course I do, silly. But I delegate most functions to Poth and reserve my time only for major decisions.”

 

“Like Freedmen’s Town?”

 

“Mister Batts, Freedmen’s Town is the last prime real estate that lends itself to Houston’s renaissance that’s bringing people to the inner city, now isn’t it? I mean, really, downtown Houston has been too long a place to work, not a place to live. We’re changing that, and we’re prepared to make ample offers for the resident’s land.   Perhaps you can help in that area.   Let’s adjourn to the smoking room and discuss this further.”

 

Batts stood, put his cup on the table, said, “Smoking’s stupid,” and left to her indignant, “Well, I never.”

 

 

Batts drove to Houston’s near east side and parked in front of Silky’s, a beer joint in a long, narrow building with white shingle siding that had long lost its white.   No windows.

Batts walked through the door without looking at the men drinking in the gloom and pushed through the office door without knocking.

 

Silky was seated behind a desk with his feet up on it. He wore black, crocodile skin shoes with a matching belt. His black shirt and pants were raw silk. His skin was oily white, and his eyes were a startling dark brown, looming in contrast over prissy pink lips.

Batts stood in front of the desk and said, “Hear there be a hitter in town.”

 

Silky shrugged and looked bored.

 

Batts said, “You wanna get busted up now or you wanna quit playing like you nonchalant.”

 

“My good man,” Silky said, “the grapevine is indiscriminate. My ears hear the same thing your ears hear. The only dependable tidbit of information that’s come my way is that someone has been imported.”

 

“Getting impatient wit’ you.”

 

“Someone has been imported because no local hitter, including myself, was willing to take the contract.”

 

“Why?”

 

“It seems this contract included the possible hit upon a child.”

 

“And you don’t hit children, that right?”

 

“I maintain certain principles.”

 

“He make contact how?”

 

“I was contacted, my good man, by a note left in an envelope on the front door of my establishment. Before you ask, no one saw it delivered.”

 

“How you suppos’t to answer?”
“The note said to leave a green kerchief on the door if yes and I would receive further details, leave a red one if no. I left a red one. Silk, of course. And by the way, the offer was one million dollars. Per hit.”

 

Batts looked at him for a moment. “Maybe you do got principles,” he said. “You still got the note?”

 

“Temporarily.” Silky opened a desk drawer, withdrew an envelope, and tossed it across the desk.

 

Batts picked it up and examined it. Plain white, standard size envelope, the outside with Silky’s name in cut-out magazine letters. The same with the note itself. He tapped it against his nose, looked at Silky over its edge, and said, “I be taking this wit’ me.”

 

“Then I’ve been of help, which means you now owe me one.”

 

“I owe nobody nothing. But you need one, pass it by. I see if it meet with my principles.”

That evening, Batts told Nadine, “I know who it is,” and outlined his plan.

 

 

At midnight, Nadine waited at the kitchen table and felt as if she were an intruder in her own home, a stranger who bore no resemblance to the person who had always respected the law. Now here she was willingly strolling along outside it.

She heard a car park outside, then footsteps coming up the outside stairway. She thought of her daughter safely sequestered far away and steeled herself, stood at the door and opened it on the first knock.

A man with vacuous eyes stood there smiling and showing tiny, yellow teeth. Her body shuddered with the certainty that death had arisen from the abyss and found her.

He pushed her aside and said, “Hi, there!   I’m Earl Dean Feemer.” He reached behind him and pulled someone forward by the hand. “Let me introduce my traveling companion, the amazing Grace Munch.”

He slammed the door shut, pulled a silenced .22 target pistol from under his shirt and quickly looked into the other rooms.   Grace Munch stood by the kitchen counter, distaste on her flawlessly made-up face, staring at Nadine as if examining lice.

 

Feemer returned to the kitchen and pointed the .22 at Nadine with one hand and flicked a lighter to a Camel with the other hand.   Smoke trailed through the hairs in his nostrils as he spoke with the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He said, “You’re a trusting person of your word, my dear, but we aren’t. We’re not here to buy your land as little Miss Amazing told you when you called.   Too bad for you and your soon-to-be orphan.”

 

Grace Munch said, “All right, get to it. Let’s see how you’re going to make this look like a burglary.”

 

“This’ll be two mil, not one,” he said.

Her face turned into a grotesque mask and she snarled, “First you said threatening her daughter was all it would take. Then that Batts creature shows up and I still couldn’t buy the rest of Freedmen’s Town and bring that stinking Greg to his knees, watch him grovel and beg while I ruin him. Teach him to use my money for his little trollops. Now you ―”

“You’re not trying to bargain with me, are you?”

“No, of course not.”

 

“Then quit talking so I can get this done.” He reached for Nadine, but like a wild animal aware of any inappropriate sound, he turned to the doorway instead.

 

Batts came through it like a howitzer.

 

Feemer backed up and stumbled over a chair and fired wildly in Batts’ direction.

 

Before Feemer could straighten, Batts smacked the .22 out of his hand, grabbed him by the neck and lifted him off the floor high enough that Feemer’s legs dangled, held him at arms length, and with his thumb and fingers overlapped around Feemer’s neck, slowly tightened his squeeze.

Feemer’s fumy eyes bugged out, the whites of his eyes suffused with red, his tongue protruded like an obscene wad of flesh and pushed the Camel from his mouth. A gurgling

sound came from his throat, until he passed out.

Batts let go and Feemer dropped to the floor like a plumb line.

 

Grace Munch screamed, “Feemer made me do it.   He was going to kill me if ¾”

 

Batts pointed an index finger at her, his eyes showing what he would do if she didn’t shut up.

 

She shut up.

Nadine didn’t move through the mere seconds it took for it to be over. She looked at Feemer on the floor, then back at Batts, saw the beginning of a blood stain on his shirt, and implored, “My God, are you hurt?”

 

Batts replied, “I be big-boned.”

 

 

Feemer and Grace Munch were jailed after the police questioned Batts. Within one hour, her lawyer claimed that she suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, that it was all part of a plan by Feemer to obtain the land and the billions it represented, that Feemer was hiding in her house when Batts was there, pointing a gun from behind a curtain at both of them.

The primary detective told Batts that if DNA evidence from the saliva on the envelope matched Grace or Feemer’s, then both had a state-paid vacation waiting at the Walls in Huntsville, if not a lethal injection should they tie Feemer to the girl’s bones, a cold case still open.   Then he added with a wink that Feemer was already talking deal. And besides that, the Munch home didn’t have any curtains.

Nadine drove Batts home after picking up her daughter.   As they ate breakfast together, a wild thought crossed her mind that if she married this man they would need a bigger bed.

 

She asked, “How were you so sure she was the one behind it?”

“Self love.”

 

“I don’t get it.”

 

“Self love. Vanity.”

 

“You mean other than being put off by Grace Munch referring to herself in the third person, you could see that her vanity was so pathological she couldn’t simply divorce her

husband for cheating on her? You got all that in one visit to her house?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Then what?”

 

“That envelope I told you ‘bout, one at Silky’s?
“Yes?”

 

“Perfume on it. Half ounce, ten grand, special order by one person. Same sweet stink she had on when I was in her house.”

 

Nadine smiled and placed her hand on his, gently.

May Maye peeked around the edge of her bedroom door just as Batts looked at her mother’s hand, and there it was. His smile started with his eyes and spread down his cheeks

alongside his nose to the corners of his mouth and stretched out towards his ears, almost touching them, and the shiniest, whitest teeth in the world brightened the room.

The End

“So this guy, he puts his cards down and says, ‘full-house, kings over tens,’ and starts to drag the pot in. ‘Hold it,’ this old fella says, he lays down four eights, smiles around the table and reaches his hands out to the piled-up money. ‘Not so fast,’ the dude in black mumbles. ‘Watcha got, man? Let’s see your cards.’ Everybody leans toward the dude waiting to see his cards. ‘Two deuces and a razor blade,’ the dude says. ‘You wins again,’ he’s told.”

 

Laughter and chuckles filled the room where the six men played poker in David Harley’s game room. “Where do you hear all these jokes, Dave?” Leonard Holtz, one of the players asked.

 

“From my business contacts. I think they save ’em all up for me. God, I hear a couple hundred a week it seems like. I only remember one or two.”

 

“Speaking of business, congratulations on your promotion. Vice-president of Visual Gaming and Associates. For a guy who doesn’t have a degree in software engineering, you’ve done great.”

 

“Actually, I am a software engineer. I specialized in microchips. Since I’m mostly in sales, no one really notices. But thanks. The next thing is taking the ‘Associates’ off the end of the business name and adding ‘Harley.'” David couldn’t help but puff his chest out a bit. It was a feat to advance this far up the old totem pole in such a short period of time. “Since my forte’ is bullshit, it’s a good thing the position is more over sales and distribution rather than development.”

 

 

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After the poker game broke up and he closed the front door behind the last player leaving, David went into his gourmet kitchen and grabbed a Moosehead out of the fridge. He opened the bottle and sat down on the expensive couch in the elaborate living room of his damn high-priced home. He had held his position as vice-president for three months and owned the new house one-month. Life was looking good. Yeah.

 

“Come in.” The stenciling on the door read: James Moucha, President, Visual Gaming and Associates. Moucha came out of nowhere and bought the company. With some young, bright, software engineers, he gave them a free rein on developing video games. Somehow Moucha broke into a tight niche market. “Sit down, David.”

 

David sat in the chair in front of Moucha’s desk. With the president’s desk and chair raised several inches above the normal, Moucha was able to look down on all who sat in front of him, even though he stood but five foot seven. Everyone in the company knew he’d gotten the idea from a novel he’d read and no one dared tell him it was a hilarious joke within the halls.

 

“What can I do for you, James?” David crossed his legs. He straightened his six foot two frame to see if Moucha would have to inch up higher. No dice.

 

“Since your promotion, we’ve placed 8% more games. I have no doubt it’s from your effort and expertise. I’m patting myself on the back for having the foresight to make you vice-president. Congratulations, you’ll find a little something extra in here for your excellent work.” Moucha handed David an envelope. “It’s in cash, so enjoy it unencumbered, if you know what I mean.”

 

“James, thank you. I don’t know what else to say, other than you made the right move in promoting me, if I say so myself. You haven’t seen anything yet.” David put the envelope in his suit coat pocket, anxiously wanting to leave so he could see how much was in it.

 

“I see a bright future for you, David. No telling how far you can go with this company.” Moucha leaned over and handed David an engraved invitation. “It’s for my daughter’s wedding. I’d like you to come and meet the family.”

 

Dave closed his office door and took the envelope out of his coat pocket. With a wry grin, he stuck his thumb under the flap and tore it open. Five $100 dollar bills came out in his hand. Are you shitting me? This is all for bringing in an extra $345,000? Dave put the money in his wallet.

 

He left work early to beat the traffic and drove his new BMW 740 to the Casmier’s Lounge, a gathering place for young executives and people on the move up. There was standing room only at the bar. David saw Leonard Holtz and squeezed in next to him.

 

“Hey, David. How goes the new vice-president?” Holtz, a systems analyst for one of the larger banks in the city, motioned the fast-moving bartender for two more drinks like his, a martini with three olives.

 

“I’ll buy this drink,” David said. “I got a bonus for bringing in an extra $345,000 this month.”

 

“Great, how much?”

 

“Five hundred.” The drinks were placed in front of them and David laid a twenty down on the bar. The bartender took the twenty and left a five and a one. David picked his martini up and drained half in one long swallow. Several twenties joined the six dollars left on the bar as he stuck two fingers in the air and pointed to Holtz and him.

 

“Five hundred? Christ, you should have gotten five thousand! I didn’t realize Moucha was such a cheap ass.”

 

“Well, I did get a invitation to his daughter’s wedding. He probably thinks that’s worth something.” Dave snorted and finished his first drink. Holtz followed suit then smacked his lips when he pulled the olives off the stick and ate them. “But that’s okay. Moucha told me I was going far in the company. I’d think partner, if I was a gambling man.”

 

“Yeah, partner or the next president of the company when Moucha retires.” Holtz raised his fresh drink. “Here’s to you, Dave. I’ll be able to say I knew you when you were just getting your training wheels taken off.”

 

When a couple of guys slam down four or five martinis in an hour and a half, they usually are in the mood for an adventure. Dave and Holtz took a taxi to the Luxor Casino and were able to walk in without staggering.

 

“Let’s just see how much I can parlay this bonus into.” Dave said as he slid between some players at a craps table. Holtz stood behind him garnering a drink for each of them and sipped it with a shit-eating grin on his face. Dave downed half the drink and was handed the dice.

 

 

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He got $400 in ten-dollar chips, and placed three bets: pass, corner six and corner eight. His first roll was a four. Dave felt good and played the odds with two chips. The dice on the next two rolls hit the six and eight. Things were looking up. When the gambling Gods are watching you, time flies. Dave and Holtz had been at the table a little over two hours. The $400 left of the bonus was gone, and Dave had chased it down the rathole with another $3000. Lucky for him the casino took his check. It was also lucky Holtz paid for their taxi back to the Casmier Lounge.

 

“God, I can’t believe how your luck went to shit so fast.” Holtz said.

 

“Me either. I’ve lost over eight thousand this week.” Dave had a hand over his eyes as they rode in the back of the taxi.

 

“Eight grand? I didn’t know you went that heavy.”

 

“I never did until I started playing at the Olympus. I beat them out of about five-six thousand in a week; then my luck seemed to turn on me. They got it all back plus an extra five. I gotta knock this shit off before I’m in the poor house.”

 

“My luck wasn’t so hot either, but what’s new,” Holtz said. “I think that’s why I never save any money and I’ve been divorced twice. Probably getting cheated, too.”

 

Dave got home without getting picked up by the cops or wrecking his Beammer and fell into bed, clothes and all. After a night of fitful sleep, he woke up with drool stuck on the side of his mouth and a trail where it ran to the pillow. It was an effort, but he drug himself out of bed, showered, and eventually arrived at work on time, though he suspected he still looked rummy. Christ, how many of those martinis did we drink?

 

 

 

 

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The rest of the week mended him and like most young, single guys making big bucks, he had short term memory. Friday night with a pocket full of cash found him at the Olympus Casino, rolling the dice and slamming down vodka and tonics. He started off hot then gradually his luck turned so cold it was surprising the dice didn’t have frost on them. Talk about déjà vu. Dave knew his luck would change though.

 

The sun streamed in through the open blinds the next morning, waking Dave up from the rise in temperature on his bare back.

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It wasn’t his bedroom he was in and the bleached blonde asleep next to him, with a false eyelash hanging from one of her eyes, didn’t ring any bells either. She apparently felt him stir and rolled over and looked at him through bloodshot eyes.

 

“Was it good for you?” Dave smiled as he said it, trying to show he knew what was going on.

 

“Not bad, that’ll be $200.” With modesty befitting a woman who probably made the money in five minutes, she got out of bed and stood naked in front of him, her hand out.

 

“Care to visit first?” The suit pants were on the floor, crumpled and lying on top of his shirt, sweater and underwear. His fingers grabbed a belt loop and he pulled the pants over to him and took his wallet out. Shit, eight bucks. “Do you take credit cards?”

 

“Cash…now, or I call the cops.” Her lips formed a pout. “I’m underage.”

 

“Christ, that’s all I need. Look,” he unfastened a gold chain from around his neck. “This is worth a hell of a lot more than what I owe you. The chain is pure gold. Take it and call it even…please?”

 

When she held it in her hand, the weight convinced her he wasn’t lying; it was gold. “Okay, we’re even. Take my advice; in the future, I wouldn’t be getting dates if you can’t pay for it. You might get hurt one of these days.”

 

“Thanks, I’ll remember that.” Dave flopped back on the bed, having no memory of the night. And where the hell was he?

The door made a hollow bang when she closed it as she left. Dave rolled over and picked the ashtray up lying on the bed light table. The Olympus Casino and Hotel was written on the bottom of it. It was the first time he’d ever been in one of the Olympus’s rooms and it wasn’t very impressive. Dark, inexpensive furniture with a carpet that should have been replaced long ago. After looking around the bed and trash can for a condom, he got into the shower and turned the water on as hot as he could stand. The idea of scrubbing off the remnants of the hooker and taking an overload of antibiotics as soon as he got home made him nearly throw up.     You stupid shit.

 

The telephone was ringing when he stepped out of the shower.   He tracked wet footprints across the carpet on the way to the phone. “Hello?”

 

“Mr. Harley, this is Frank Truman, manager of the Olympus. We need to talk. Stop at my office in twenty minutes.”

 

No please or anything. Dave felt a foreboding surround him like a doctor’s report telling him he had cancer. “Twenty minutes? I can probably make it. I’ll see you then.” The levity he put in his voice went unanswered from Truman.

 

“Good. I’ll expect you. My office is next to the registration desk.” Truman hung up.

 

Dave held the telephone in his hand, staring at it as if expecting a reason for the tone of the manager.

 

“Come in,” Truman said when Dave knocked on the office door. “Please, be seated. He pointed to a chair in front of his desk.

 

Dave sat down and accepted an offered cup of coffee. “What’s the problem, Mr. Truman?”

 

A printed out bill and several copies of chits were placed in front of him. Dave quickly added the numbers and looked up with a puzzled expression. “Are you kidding me? These total up to $53,000. God, you even charged me $200 for the lousy room.”

 

“Those are your signatures, and we have you signing them on film. When are you going to take care of these?”

 

“I don’t have that kind of cash. Hey, I’m mortgaged to the hilt with my house and car. Can I make payments or something?” Dave wiped off the sweat that formed on his forehead.

 

“We’re not unreasonable. You have one month from today and you’ll pay us back $58,300.”

 

“You’re charging me five grand interest? I’m not going to pay that. Sue me for it.”

 

“Suing people isn’t in our vocabulary. We’ll notify your employer and see if he’ll assist you, and if that doesn’t work, we write the debt off¾then you. Do you understand my meaning, Mr. Harley?” Truman’s dark eyes stared at Dave, glinting.

 

Dave felt a roar in his ears and his scrotum shriveled from a sudden flash of fear. This can’t be happening! “Are you serious?”

 

“Absolutely. Be rest assured, we know you, Mr. Harley. Your situation is like the commercial on TV. You can pay us now, or pay us later. You may leave now.” Truman swiveled around in his desk chair and started looking at some papers on the table behind him. “Oh, you can take those chits if you like, they’re copies.” Truman said, his back to Dave.

 

His hand shook with a small tremor as Dave picked the bill and chits up and shoved them into his pants pocket. Without a word he left the office and found his car where he’d parked it the night before. He was afraid he’d throw-up in it but was able to puke next to the front wheel. It didn’t look like anyone saw him barf. The drive home was uneventful. Dave went into the house and climbed into his bed. The only time he got out of bed for the remainder of the weekend was to go to the bathroom.

 

When Monday morning arrived, Dave had resolved to ask Moucha for a loan. After all, he was the vice-president. His secretary told him Moucha wanted to see him as soon as he came in to the building. What now? The mirror in his office showed him his tie was straight and he walked down to Moucha’s office and knocked on the door.

 

“Come in, Dave. This is my future son-in-law, Greg Laurentis. Greg, our new vice-president, Dave Harley.” The young man that stood up and shook Dave’s hand was dark and good looking. His smile showed white, even teeth. The handshake was firm, but not macho.

 

“My pleasure.” Laurentis said softly.

 

“Greg has quite a bit of experience in the gaming business. He’s going to learn the local job and take over for me when I retire next year.” Moucha patted Dave’s shoulder. “Dave here will help you, he really knows the sales side of the business.”

 

“I’m sure Dave will be able to help me at first.” Laurentis said. “We’ll just have to see.” He looked at Dave with a cool look in his eyes.

 

Dave felt like a sledgehammer had been dropped on his head. His heart pounded so loud and hard, he thought the two other men would hear it.

 

“Are you okay, Dave? You look a little pale.” Moucha poured a glass of water and handed it to Dave.

 

“I’ve got a little bit of the flu, it’s had me in bed all weekend.”

 

“Maybe you should take a couple of days off, get yourself well. Go on, go home.” Moucha ordered.

 

“I think I will. Nice to have met you, Greg.” Dave loosened his tie and left. When he got into the BMW he took the Boulder Highway, toward the lake.

 

“Bastard!” He hammered the steering wheel with his hand. He pulled off the highway and leaned his head back against the seat. “I’m dead.” To his right, down on a flat, remote controlled airplanes soared and looped in the sky. Dave watched them for a bit and his face lost some of the desperate look. “Why not? I’ve got nothing to lose.” He flipped a u-turn and headed back to Vegas. Dave had a plan.

 

“Working late again, Mr. Harley?” The rent-a-cop asked Dave as he signed in.

 

“Yeah, I’ve gotta earn the big bucks I’m getting paid, Fred.”

 

“Jeez, you been here every night this week. The company’s sure getting their money’s worth.”

 

Dave unlocked the door to the delivery room and went to the machines that were standing under the sign reading: Berlin Towers. There were four rows of video games: dimes, quarters, dollars and progressive five-dollar games. Dave opened the front panel on a machine that had number 12603. It was a progressive five-dollar video poker game.

 

He reached inside with a small screwdriver. “Come to papa.”

The chip came out and he took a new chip from a cellophane bag in his coat pocket and reached back in the machine. “Oh, you’re good Dave, you’re damn good.” His whisper caressed the machine.

 

“Leonard, how about a drink tonight? I’ll meet you at Casmier’s. Good. See you there.” Dave hung the phone up in his office. It had been two weeks since the video machine had been delivered and it was time to get out of debt.

Dave was sitting at a table when Holtz came into the lounge

 

“Hey, over here.” Dave shouted. The music and conversation was loud, just what he wanted. After a couple of drinks and some small talk, Dave hunkered down.

 

“Leonard, I’m in deep, deep shit. I’ve got three weeks to come up with $58,000 or I’m dead.”

 

“Christ! I can loan you some money, but only a couple of thousand; I’ve been having some bad luck myself. Can you borrow it from a bank?”

 

“I’m maxed. I found out the other day that Moucha’s new son-in-law is going to take over when he retires. Who knows how long I’ll have my job? I don’t think the guy likes me.”

 

“Man, if I could help you more, I would. If there’s anything I can do besides giving you money I don’t have, I will.” Holtz said.

 

“I’m glad you said that. You can help me, and you’ll actually come out ahead.”

 

“Tell me, the coming out a head interests me.”

 

“There happens to now be a progressive $5.00 video poker machine that will hit a progressive jackpot when I want it to.”

 

“You’re shitting me. Where?”

 

“If you’ll help me, I’ll tell you everything. You play it, I make it pay. I get one-third, you get the rest, because you’ll be the one paying the taxes. Last night, the pot was two and a half million.”

 

“Jesus! I could really use the money now. I’m in. How do we do it?” Holtz drained his glass and motioned for another round for the two of them.

 

“I’ll give you the machine’s number. You go in and put a couple of hundred in it, so it won’t look suspicious. I’ve put a sequential microchip in it. When the sequence is repeated three times in the correct order, it’ll hit the jackpot.”

 

Holtz licked his lips.

“We’ll wait a week then I’ll get a hold of you and get my share. That will put me close to the deadline but who gives a shit?”

 

The Las Vegas Tribune (UPI) Friday night, Mr. Leonard Holtz hit the five-dollar progressive jackpot at the Berlin Towers Casino. His jackpot was worth two million, six hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars.

 

Dave smiled as he read the Tuesday newspaper. After paying the $58,000 he’d have a nice little pile of cash left. Hell, Leonard ought to buy me a drink.

 

“Leonard Holtz’s office, may I help you?” A young woman’s voice answered.

 

“I’d like to speak to Leonard, please. This is Dave Harley.” He couldn’t help smiling. The clock in his office showed

4:45 P.M.

 

“Mr. Holtz is on vacation, we expect him back in two weeks. May I take a message?”

 

Dave almost dropped to his knees. A cold fist formed in the pit of his stomach. “No…no message. Thanks.” He dialed Holtz’s home telephone number. No answer.

 

When he looked at the clock again it was nearly 6:00 P.M. His footsteps echoed as he walked down the hallway toward the rear exit. He’d been making it a point to leave from the back since his talk with Truman at the Olympus.

 

He started to open the door to the warehousing area when a braided rope dropped over his head. The knot pulled up tight against his throat as he was pulled off his feet, backwards. Moucha came out of the shadows and came up close to Dave’s face. Muocha’s future son-in-law was right behind him, a cold grin on his face.

 

“You ungrateful pig. Rigging a machine. Stealing from my family. We own this town, Goomba!” Moucha nodded his head.

 

“Please.” Dave gasped, trying to drag in one small breath of air. “Don’t.”

 

Fred, the six-foot-four rent-a-cop, threw the rope over a roof beam and pulled Dave into the air. His legs kicked and thrashed but he couldn’t suck any air into his lungs. Dave couldn’t feel the rope as it burned furrows into his skin. The last thing he heard was the rent-a-cop.

 

“Suicide, Mafia style. Right, Don Moucha?”

The End

Madeline arrived home from work, kicked off her shoes in the foyer and hurried up the stairs, unhooking her bra, relieved to remove her restrictive clothing

After spending her lunch hour and her pay check at a chic beauty salon for a cut, curl and color to highlight her brown hair with blonde streaks, Jane was eager for Jeremy to see her new look. Everyone at the office had complimented her. For the first time in her life, she actually felt pretty. Basically shy, she had kept a low profile wrapping her fine figure in comfortable rather than trendy clothes. Painting her face with cosmetics and buying the services of overpaid hairstylists in noisy salons made her uncomfortable. Her mother, a former model, and a hard act to follow, had often referred to her, as ”Plain Jane.”   Since her parents had moved to Florida and had a busy life filled with parties and travel, she rarely had contact with them. An only child, Jane was used to solitude until she’d met Jeremy.

 

She had planned a romantic evening to go over last minute wedding details, and had picked up his favorite take-out dinner from the sushi bar on Madison Avenue.

 

Arriving home from work, she kicked off her shoes in the foyer and plopped the take out dinner on the table. Hurrying down the hall towards the bedroom, she unhooked her bra eager to change into sweats. “That’s better,” she mumbled, relieved to remove her restrictive clothing.

 

“Jeremy, I’m home and I’ve got dinner.” she sang. No answer. She glanced at her watch. It was after six and he should be home by now. “Hey, Jer, where are you?” Silence.

 

She burst into the bedroom. The closet door was ajar. She gasped, spying all the empty hangers that had contained Jeremy’s clothes this morning. She looked on the dresser for a note, but there wasn’t any.

 

A distinct odor of cleanser pervaded the apartment. The bathroom appeared freshly scrubbed and every surface had been treated to an expert cleansing.

 

The kitchen sparkled too. As though Jeremy, her mate for five years wanted to rid the house of his fingerprints and his essence. There was no note on the refrigerator door, no message on the note pad next to the phone. In fact, the note pad was gone, too.

 

What the heck was going on? They had rarely argued, and certainly not recently. He had been attentive and loving. What could have happened?

 

She flew into his den. His laptop was gone and his bookshelves emptied. There was no sign that Jeremy Steel had ever been there. Within the day, he had cleared out. Puff! Gone!

 

Jane looked everywhere for something he may have left behind, but she found nothing.

 

Where and why did he go? Why didn’t he leave a note? Was he forced? He hadn’t left in a hurry. This was a highly calculated, thorough move.

 

For the past five years, she had lived harmoniously with a man who had suddenly, deliberately dropped out of her life without leaving an explanation.

 

It would be futile to call the police. There was no proof that he hadn’t left of his own accord. The police would think he had probably gotten cold feet after having made wedding plans, but Jane refused to accept that as a fact.

 

She tried eating the sushi dinner, but having lost her appetite, she tossed the food into the trash.

 

Jane turned on the TV in the bedroom and crawled into bed. The sheets were new and freshly laundered. Another sign that Jeremy wanted nothing of himself to remain in the apartment. She surfed the channels for local news. There were no reports of Jeremy Steele.

 

Sleep eluded her. She cried until her head hurt and her eyes burned. She turned on the light and stared at the telephone. Who should she call? Would she ever hear from him? No one just leaves without a reason. She was bewildered.

 

The next day, her eyelids were red and swollen and she felt too miserable to leave the house. She called her office and said she needed a few days for personal leave. Jane had to mourn, sort out her situation and cancel the wedding arrangements. Her phone message to her parents was not returned and she assumed they were on a trip.

 

Several times, she was tempted to call the law office where Jeremy worked as an accountant, but she was too ashamed.

 

She tried to put together what she learned about Jeremy during their time together.

 

They had met at a Juliard recital and found they shared a love of music and books. Neither had any friends and they spent all their free time together.

 

Jeremy had told her he was orphaned at an early age, had no family and was used to being alone and had never considered getting married until he had fallen in love with her. He suggested they live together for awhile before getting married.

 

According to him, his parents left him a significant sum of money. He used it on lavish gifts for Jane, for their expensive vacations and had bought their co-op apartment outright in her name (allegedly for tax purposes) She was surprised and pleased that because he trusted her, he wouldn’t ask her to sign a pre-nuptial agreement.

 

He would appear to listen intently when she discussed her work, but he’d never discuss his. “What’s to tell?” he’d say when she’d inquire. “Guess what? I’m really stoked. I balanced ten accounts today. I’d rather hear about your exciting projects.”

When they had first gotten together, Jane was twenty-five years old, a plain, petite brunette with decent facial features. She rarely dated and was inexperienced in the sex department. Jeremy was a few years older, medium height, lean and had an acceptable appearance. Best of all, he was tender, considerate and patient and she learned to enjoy their coupling.

 

After living together for five years, they decided they were ready to marry. He hadn’t given her a clue that he had gotten cold feet.

 

A few days after he vanished, Jane’s feelings turned from shock to anger. She had to let it go. She returned to work on a challenging project at her job in a public relations firm.

 

Soon, her anger turned into sadness. Now, alone, she realized she had been dependent upon Jeremy for companionship. Wouldn’t he miss her, too?

 

Perhaps he had left because he was in trouble with the law and was trying to protect her. Ruminating over him made her feel worse and she forced herself to concentrate on the work project to help her cope with her grief.

 

One week later, her parents called, and not at all surprising blamed her for Jeremy’s change of heart.

 

Jane’s anger gave her the courage to call Jeremy’s office. The human resource department revealed that Jeremy Steel had terminated his position a month ago. By law, they could not provide additional information.

 

She was determined to move on and put Jeremy and her parents out of her mind. She accepted dinner dates with her friends from work, and felt less lonely.

 

Habitually, she tuned in to local news before going to sleep. After a stupid commercial—that’s an oxymoron, she thought, the TV reporter announced the disappearance of Jeremy Steel; an accountant wanted for embezzlement. If anyone had knowledge of his whereabouts, they were asked to contact Detective Riley at the flashing phone number on the screen. Jane jotted the information in her notebook.

Now, at least she understood.

 

Hurt and disappointed, she decided to visit her old psychologist.

 

She came away from her session feeling better. She learned that she could play the role of good parent to herself—the role that her parents rejected. She also learned that she had no reason to suspect her tender lover was a crook. At least Jeremy had given her the chance to experience romance and intimacy. Dr. Glades helped her to believe those feelings could resurface with someone new, but next time she’d have to know much more about a person before allowing the relationship to flourish. She vowed to learn from that experience.

 

Several months later, she met Kevin Trent while handling a public relations campaign for his client. Kevin and Jane were instantly attracted to each other, but they agreed to allow their courtship to proceed at a slow pace. After two years, they married and were content.

 

Jane rarely thought of Jeremy until a vacation in Mendocino, a remote, picturesque, northern California coastal town.

 

Kevin and Jane had driven up from San Francisco through a long, winding road lined with giant redwoods. They stopped at Big River State Park and hiked a gorgeous trail uphill along a river. It was very serene. Jane thought they were alone until she spied a man with a large brown dog hiking the trail. Although he was walking ahead, she sensed a familiarity and she gasped.

 

“What’s wrong, honey?” Kevin asked.

 

Before she could answer, the man turned around and walked towards them.

 

“Oh, my God, Kev, that’s Jeremy, the guy I told you had disappeared.” She squeezed Kevin’s hand.

 

The man hesitated when he saw the couple, then zigzagged into a run passing them, the brown dog following.

 

Jane caught a glimpse at the man’s face. He had a trim dark beard and mustache. Sunglasses hid his eyes. A black wool cap covered his head. Long strands of dark hair, speckled with gray fell to his shoulders. From his appearance, she was almost positive it was Jeremy. There was something about him that jarred her.

 

Jane’s knees began to buckle and she leaned against a giant redwood tree for support.

 

“Are you okay, honey?” Kevin asked.

 

“I’m shocked. I never expected to see him again.”

 

“But how can you be certain it was him? That guy’s face was covered by hair and you only had a quick look.”

“I know, but I feel it was him. Let’s get out of here.”

 

Kevin drove the rented Buick into the charming old town of Mendocino. The guidebook helped them locate some scenes from the TV series “Murder She Wrote.”

 

They enjoyed an organic vegetarian lunch in the garden of Mendo Bistro, a quaint little café overlooking the Pacific. Afterwards, they poked around at the gift shops and galleries housed in historic buildings dating from the days the town began. Browsing was usually pleasant, but Jane’s thoughts of Jeremy intruded. She had figured he’d escaped to a foreign land from which he could not be extradited. Seeing him here—and she more and more certain it was Jeremy—unnerved her.

 

“Kevin, maybe I should call the FBI or the local authorities.”

 

“Ah, come on, honey, how can you be sure it was Jeremy?”

 

“I lived with him for five years. Even with all that hair, I sense it was him.”

 

“If you’re wrong, it will be embarrassing.”

 

“Jeremy is a fugitive from justice.”

 

Kevin shook his head. “We’re here on a much needed vacation, Jane. Tell you what. If you see him again, call 911 from your cell phone.”

 

They headed to the car for the short drive to Hill Haven, a Victorian Bed and Breakfast furnished with European antiques and lots of lace. In their room overlooking the surf, they conversed and comforted one another. Listening to the ocean roar, they finally fell asleep between silk sheets in a brass four-posted bed.

The next morning, after an elegantly presented breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice, cherry cheese crepes and dark roasted coffee, Jane and Kevin drove to Jughead State Beach. Kevin’s love of nature inspired Jane, a big city person, and she was eager to take a self-guided tour. They planned to trek a natural geological staircase and examine the distinct plant life.

 

From the first terrace of the Headlands, dominated by wildflowers, grasses and blackberries, they looked out at the breath-taking coastal prairie and watched waves slam against the rocky shore. The cool fresh air invigorated the couple.

 

“This is absolutely gorgeous, Kevin. Makes me want to live here.”

 

“Me, too, but I think you’d miss the city.”

 

Before she could answer, they spied the man Jane thought was Jeremy, again accompanied by the brown Labrador.

 

“Jeremy?” Jane called as he came closer. The man stared at her, turned on his heel and ran away, the dog trailing.

 

Jane pulled out her cell phone and hit the buttons, but there was no service in the area. “Come on, Kevin. Let’s hurry back to a landline phone. I’m going to call the authorities.”

 

Kevin sighed. “Okay, we agreed you would do it if we saw him again, and this time he ran away when you called his name. I’m sorry I doubted you, hon.”

 

They jogged to the car. Kevin drove towards town while Jane repeatedly tried in vain to call from her cell. “Damn!” she shouted.

 

The couple entered a bar and Jane placed the call from a phone booth. She gave the sheriff a description of fugitive Jeremy Steel, former New York accountant and his dog.

 

“Ma’am, I know Jeremy Steel very well. There’s no way he’s a fugitive. He’s been here all his life. Never been gone long enough to work in New York as an accountant. This guy is the best baker in town. We’d all be very disappointed if he’d left for any length of time.”

 

“I apologize for bothering you, Sheriff. Can you tell me where I can find him?”

 

“Ask anyone to point you to the bakery on Main Street. He’s probably there now.”

 

Kevin and Jane were a few steps from the bakery. They entered the small shop and asked the clerk for Jeremy.

 

“He’s in his office, I’ll get him.”

 

The man they had seen in the park came to the front of the shop to meet them. His hair was tied in a ponytail.

 

“What can I do for you?”

 

Jane stared into his face. He looked exactly like Jeremy.

 

“We’re Jane and Kevin Trent from New York and would like to ask you a question.”

 

“Sure, go ahead.”

 

“Do you have a twin?”

 

“Why, yes, my twin Justin, but we’ve been separated since our parents divorced when we were little tykes. Do you know my brother?”

 

 

“Would you mind if we sat down somewhere? I have something to tell you,” Jane said.

 

He crooked his finger and led them into his office. He pulled out three folding chairs and they sat in a semi-circle.

 

“Have you kept touch with your brother?” she asked.

 

He shook his head. “No, but I’ve tried. My parents divorced and split everything in half including us kids. Dad took me, and Mom took Justin and ta-ta off they went to merry ole England.”

 

“I’m sorry to tell you, but I was involved with your twin for five years. He claimed his name was Jeremy Steel and that he was an accountant. Just before we were going to be married, he disappeared. Later I found out he was wanted for embezzlement.”

 

“Oh, my!” said the baker, his face paling. He stared blankly as though in a trance.

 

“He’s stolen much more than money. He had stolen my heart, and apparently, your identity.”

 

The baker rolled his eyes.

 

“Why did you run away from me?” Jane asked.

 

“You stared at me kinda crazy-like and I thought you might hurt me.” He pulled out a tissue from a box on his desk and wiped his tearing eyes. “This news is hard to take.”

 

“You were right. I did hurt you, and I’m very sorry.”

 

“I’m just a small town guy. I don’t know anyone who’d behave like that…and my own brother, no less.”

 

“It’s no reflection on you. After I saw you, I reported it to the sheriff. He assured me that there is no way you’d be a fugitive.”

 

“Do you have a birth certificate?” Kevin asked.

 

“Never needed one. Everyone knows me like forever, man.”

 

“Have you traveled out of the country?” Kevin asked.

 

“Furthest I’ve gone is Vancouver for a few days. Didn’t need a passport.”

 

“I’d like to help you get your I.D. straightened out. No charge,” Kevin offered.

 

“Thanks, but it isn’t necessary.”

 

The baker’s assistant knocked on the door and came in with a tray of freshly baked cookies, cups and a carafe of coffee. “Please,” he said, carefully placing the tray on Jeremy’s desk.

 

“Thank you. This smells wonderful,” Jane said. “Your brother wasn’t interested in cooking or baking. He loved classical music.”

 

“I don’t remember much about him. We were so young.”

 

They chatted a little longer and Jane felt this man was truthful, and had an endearing, naïve, small town quality.

 

“I’m sorry to have given you this news, but I’m glad to have met you.”

 

“If you change your mind, I’d be glad to help. No charge.” Kevin gave him his card. They shook his hand and left.

“Forget about living in this beautiful small town, Kevin. I wouldn’t want to run into the baker again.”

 

They drove back to San Francisco the next day and returned to New York.

 

Jane notified Detective Riley. The tip about England led him to Jeremy’s mother and ultimately to a remote Caribbean island. Surrounded by books, c.d.’s and stereo, Justin lived in luxury. Although he held a passport in his own name, he was extradited and ultimately imprisoned. Kevin sent the newspaper column to the baker along with information on how to reclaim his identity.

The End

When I drove into the construction area, I saw Henry standing alone, looking up at the half-finished building, a huge rectangle of divided glass panes. It was horrid. It reminded me of Henry, polished, reflective, bright on the outside, a void on the inside. But I asked for it, didn’t I? I didn’t fall in love with a man but with the life he, as an architect with a bright future, could give me.

 

Henry was so consumed by his work that it had been easy. I would drop a suggestion into his ear: Don’t you need that promotion now, honey? A few more big clients and we’ll be home free. Henry was always eager to start a new project, spending hours on sketches and models.

 

I looked at his work and stifled yawns. They only ever varied in shape — glass rectangles, glass squares or circles. One time there was a glass hexagon; he got real excited about that one.

 

I, on the other hand, loved Gothic architecture. The cathedrals and castles I’d seen in Europe spoke to me of ambition, of desire to rise above the mundane, just as their spires reached to the heavens. I often wondered why Henry couldn’t have such desire. Then, he would sign another big client.

 

After all, I had it all, the big house in the suburbs, the weekly shopping excursions, the frequent trips to Europe, the dinners with wealthy friends at the country club. Henry was away so much I didn’t want for company of either sex.

 

The only thing I lacked was an interesting husband.

 

Divorce was out of the question, of course. Even though I had been the driving force behind Henry and his career, I knew I wouldn’t get what I needed or wanted from a divorce. I needed Henry’s talent. If talent is what you want to call it, I thought, as I pulled up beside the mass of glass and steel.

 

Henry had seen me and walked towards the car.   I rolled down the window.

 

“I’m here. What’s this all about anyway? I’ve got that meeting for the charity ball and…”

 

Henry wasn’t looking at me but at that big, ugly building.

 

I tried to not sound too irritated.   “What’s wrong? Is something wrong with the building?”

 

“I’ll say there is. It just needs something. Don’t you think it needs something?”

 

“You know I don’t like these modern buildings.   Give me the Gothic cathedrals of France or Germany anytime.” He jerked his head around and looked at me when I said that. It was so strange, almost comical. “So, can we go?” I was bored already.

 

“It’s not complete,” he continued as he settled into the leather seats of my red Mercedes.

 

“Well, of course it isn’t. You haven’t been working on it for that long.”

 

“No, I mean something’s missing. I can’t put my finger on it.”

 

“Well, let’s go. I’m starved.”

 

Henry looked down at me. “Of course, you’re right.   Let’s go to The Garden today.”

I was unexpectedly pleased with my husband. He had picked one of the choicest, most exclusive cafes in town. I often went to The Garden with my girlfriends or other, extra special friends. It was romantic, and totally un-Henry.

 

He said nothing as we drove, and I glanced over at him to see his expression. His dark hair fell down over his face, and he reached up to brush it away, a childish gesture.

 

I weaved the Mercedes in and out of the traffic, parked as near to the cafe as I could, and we began to walk. I was beginning to get worried. Never mind, I would handle it. “It’s such a beautiful day, isn’t it, Henry?” I said, taking his arm. “Warm and sunny.   I’m so glad you suggested coming to The Garden. You know, it’s my favorite place?

 

“Yes, Ruth,” he said, picking up my hand absent-mindedly and patting it.

 

So that was it, I thought. Henry knows about Jeff and that other guy. He knows I came here with them. Just who told him? I bet it was Gloria, that little tramp.

 

Henry stopped abruptly. Sprawled out on the pavement before us was one of the city’s many vagrants. I crinkled up my nose at the foul smell and grabbed Henry’s arm to pull him around, but he stood firm, staring down at the man.

 

“Come on, Henry,” I said. “We should be going.”

 

“Wait a minute! Look at this guy!”

 

The man shifted in his sleep and opened his one good eye while the other drooped and sagged. “What the hell are you looking at?” He yelled at Henry who continued to stare.

 

Henry smiled, actually smiled at the bum. Oh, nothing. I was thinking you might need some help.”

 

The absurd old man pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbed his large, pimply nose, and ran dirty hands through his greasy hair. “Well, now, Mister, I could use some money for my lunch.”

 

Much to my astonishment, Henry reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills.

 

“Here, but don’t spend it on booze, okay?”

 

The old man licked his lower lip as he reached out for the money. “Thanks, Man,” he mumbled as he pushed himself up. “I’m sure hungry.” He stood, swaying, shaking, reaching out a dirty hand. “Thanks.”

 

Henry backed away, holding his hands behind his back. “No problem.”

 

As the bum struggled down the street, Henry watched, a smile still on his lips. “Why’d you give that man money?” I asked. “I told you, you shouldn’t ever give money to guys like that.”

 

“It’s all right, Ruth. He gave me an idea.” He flashed a brilliant smile at me, and I wondered just what Henry had to say to me. I forgot about the bum. Henry hadn’t given him much money anyway.

 

At The Garden, surrounded by exotic flowers and rushing fountains, the waitress took our orders, and we sat at the glass-topped tables in silence. Henry was thinking. I could tell because he pulled at his hair and rubbed his neck, familiar mannerisms. I waited, casting my eyes around the room, hoping to find something to divert him.

 

“Ruth,” Henry finally blurted out. “Remember Strasbourg?”

 

“Strasbourg?” Had I done anything in France last year?

 

“What did you think of the cathedral?”

 

I guess he never thought about anything but buildings. “I thought it was marvelous.”

 

“And what, particularly, was so marvelous?” Henry leaned forward, his hand on his chin.

 

I sat down my wine glass and crossed my arms. “Why are you asking me all these questions? Why don’t you just ask me what you really want to know?”

 

“Okay.” Here it comes, I thought. “I want to know what you think about gargoyles,” he said.

 

“Gargoyles?”

 

“You know, those grotesque figures on the side of the cathedral that keep evil spirits…”

 

“I know what they are, Henry. I just want to know why the hell you’re asking me about them?”

 

“I just want to know, that’s all.”

 

“All right. I’ll play along. I like gargoyles. I think they’re fascinating. I even have a collection at home, as you know, which makes me wonder why you’re asking these stupid questions and what you really want to know.”

 

Henry ignored me. “I’m beginning to think gargoyles are just the thing.” He

relaxed, sinking far back into his seat, linking his long, tanned fingers behind his head.

 

The dinners arrived, and Henry began talking about normal things, the house, the job, the lawn, the job. I listened with little comment. For once I was glad of his ability to drone on and on. Nodding mechanically, I tried to prepare myself for the bomb that would inevitably drop and how I would clean up the debris.

 

The bomb didn’t drop during lunch. Henry said nothing as we drove back to the unfinished building. When he stepped out of the car, he stood in its shadow. “I’ve been thinking, Ruth, he said, “There’s got to be a change pretty soon.” Then, frowning, he looked up at the glass panes. He spoke again, but the workmen’s pounding drowned out his words. “Like all the rest” was all I heard.

*           *           *

I sat at the kitchen table alone. Moonlight filtered through the blinds and I stared at the patterns on the walls. Henry wasn’t home. He was never late for dinner when I was home. He knew how I hated people to be late. I paced over to the coffee pot and poured my third cup. I would stay up until Henry came home.

 

It was three o’clock before Henry finally came back. He banged the door, then tripped over the end table.

 

“Henry!” I startled him by speaking and flicking on the light at the same time. “Where have you been all night?” I asked.

 

He said, putting a finger to his lips, “Shhh, I’ve been very busy. If you let me go to sleep, I’ll take you to see it tomorrow.”

 

“You’re drunk.”

 

“Oh, yes.”

 

“But you never get drunk.”

 

Henry stood in the middle of the room, swaying, his mouth moving, trying to form words. “Special Occasion.” He leaned too far to the side, then righted himself. “Sleepy. Take you to see it tomorrow.”

 

“See what?”

 

Henry stumbled over to me, grabbing my arms and pulling me to him. “My masterpiece,” he breathed, and I could smell the liquor on his breath, feel the heat of him. Then he released me, turned and walked straight to the bedroom, without a stagger, closing the door behind him.

*           *           *

 

“Now, where are we going and why?” I said sternly, as he drove.

 

“The building. I want you to see something.”

 

“What?”

 

“A surprise.”

 

“I don’t like surprises.” I gripped the door handle tightly. “Last night you said something about a masterpiece.”

 

“Did I?”

 

“Yes, Henry, you were drunk. You never get drunk.”

 

“Had to,” he said, flipping the hair from his eyes.

I settled back in the seat, thinking I should have refused to go, then remembering his warm breath on my face and how tightly he had held me.

 

When we turned into the construction area, the rising sun hit the large glass panes, reflecting light into my eyes. I squinted and pulled the shade down, cutting off the sun.

 

“Can you see it,” he said with reverence in his voice, “Can you see it, Ruth?”

 

For a while I didn’t know what he was talking about. I got out of the car. I put my hands to my forehead, scanning the building.

 

Finally, I saw it, on the sixth floor, where all construction stopped, hanging awkwardly beside the smooth glass-paneled walls. I could barely make out its features. A few locks of greasy hair fell over one eye, huge and wide open. The lid of the other eye drooped and sagged. A gargantuan nose protruded from its pimply face and the enlarged lower lip sagged like the eye lid. Suddenly, I knew what it was. I knew what Henry had done. All I could say was, “My God, Henry!”

 

Henry grinned. “I did it, honey. I did it for you. To add to your collection.”

 

“My, my collection,” I stammered.

 

“Of gargoyles.”

 

Maybe I should have driven away then. Maybe I should have called the police.

Instead, I reached up and pulled him to me, forced him to look at me with his honest, innocent eyes. A lock of hair fell over them, and I pushed it back, tucking it behind his ears. He smiled at me and looked back to the building, to his masterpiece.

 

All I could do was follow his gaze back up to watch the body of the old wino, the one that gave Henry an idea. It swung back and forth, twisting in a grotesque dance, banging against the glass panes, keeping the spirits away.

The End