Backstab

by Elaine Viets

  “But Hadley’s wrong,” I said. “The downtown isn’t the city’s front porch, it’s the foundation, and if we don’t take care of our foundation, St. Louis will crack apart.”

  “Hadley is the managing editor,” Georgia said, sternly. “That may be how you see it, but it isn’t the way he does. He knows the big ad money is in the suburbs, and that’s where he thinks you should be, too. He can’t actually come out and say it, but that’s what he wants. Back off. Write a few suburban stories and get him off your back.” She stood up and grabbed a leather-bound notepad. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the ten-thirty meeting.”

  “What happens there?”

  “We discuss what we did at the nine o’clock meeting,” Georgia said.

  Hmmm. That yellow blouse was giving her a jaundiced view.

  My mentor’s interpretation of Hadley’s remarks was confirmed when Charlie, my weaselly editor, sauntered over to my desk after lunch. “Keep up those city columns,” Charlie said. “Good gritty stuff. I loved the one about Diana the Dumpster Diva. Imagine making your living that way.”

  Yeah, Charlie, I thought. Imagine it. It might be less revolting than what you do.

  Charlie oozed on. “I had a talk with Hadley. He says he wants to see you write more about the city, especially disadvantaged persons.”

  Typical Charlie. This was the exact opposite of what Hadley had just told me. It was also the reason why I counted my fingers when I shook hands with the sawed-off shrimp.

  “I appreciate you telling me this, Charlie,” I said. I did, too. It confirmed that Georgia was right. I’d get on those suburban stories. Hadley would see a couple, then have other worries and forget about me. I wrote two columns. Then I went back to my grandparents’ house. I decided I needed serious comfort. I ordered a fourteen-inch St. Louis thin-crust pizza. St. Louis pizzas do not come with cilantro, goat cheese, or roast chicken with lime. They are the perfection of grease, and the crust is the key. None of that thick crust stuff, like bad French bread smeared with tomato sauce. A true St. Louis pizza has a thin crust, not much thicker than a cracker. It’s topped with provolone cheese, which bubbles up and turns bright orange when heated. It has only the traditional fat-filled ingredients: pepperoni, bacon, or sausage. The only vegetables are onion, green pepper, and mushrooms. And the mushrooms better not be an exotic variety like shiitake or portobello. They come out of a can.

  My pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza was delivered in thirty minutes. I settled into the beige recliner for a pig-out, wrapped in my grandmother’s brown-and-yellow afghan. I channel-surfed until I found Gilligan’s Island. I always thought it was an underrated show, along with the TV versions of The Addams Family and The Munsters. Lyle voted for The Wild Wild West and Get Smart as most underappreciated. We’d debate the merits of our favorites endlessly. I fell asleep in the recliner with the TV on.

  I woke up about 8:00 A.M., but I didn’t hear the usual morning traffic noises outside. The city streets sounded strangely silent. I got up, stepping on the grease-spotted pizza box, and looked out the window. Sometime during the night, about twelve inches of snow had been dumped on the city. Twelve inches was enough to leave St. Louis semiparalyzed, with only the main snow routes open. It looked like I’d have to write my column from home, rather than fight the un-plowed side streets. St. Louis’s attitude toward snow is “God put it there and God can take it away.”

  I went down the back steps to my grandparents’ store. It was now run by Mrs. Indelicato, a widow with a good head for business. “Can I buy some eggs?” I asked her.

  “I can only sell you half a dozen,” she said. “It’s all I have left. There’s been a run on everything with this snow.”

  “What’s selling fastest?”

  “Toilet paper and milk,” said Mrs. I. “The minute the weatherman starts predicting snow, they’re in here buying toilet paper and milk, like war has been declared and there’s going to be a month-long siege. Milk I can understand. But toilet paper? Do they think snow causes diarrhea?”

  “Maybe they should lay off the milk,” I said.

  I took the eggs upstairs and fried up two. I plopped them on a piece of toast, and peppered them lightly. They looked pretty good. I carried my plate and a cup of tea into the living room and looked out the window. My neighbors were industriously digging their parking spots out of the deep snow. Cleared spots were marked with trash cans, sawhorses, and old kitchen chairs. One guy held his place with a camper shell. Mr. Stewart put out two lawn chairs with busted yellow webbing. Taped in between them was a cardboard sign with a homemade skull and crossbones.

  City people have an emotional attachment to their parking spaces. It’s hard for suburbanites, spoiled by driveways, garages, and carports, to understand what that rectangle means in front of our home. Never mind what the law says. City people believe they own that parking spot. Some have defended it to the death—literally. There have been shootings over parking spaces. The lucky ones get their cars shot. Even in good weather, people get touchy about their parking spaces. Last summer I heard about a newcomer who ignored the local custom and parked anywhere he wanted on his street. He said he could. It was his legal right. His neighbors warned him repeatedly to stay in his place, but he ignored them, and inconvenienced everybody. One day, he came out and found his back tire shot out—with arrows. I thought that was sporting.

  I also knew a guy who was a wood-carver. He made a replica of a city fire hydrant, painted it the proper colors, and put it in front of his house while he was at work. When he came home, he put the fake hydrant in his trunk and claimed his spot.

  Another South Sider was having trouble with a new neighbor taking his spot. He solved the problem with psychology. To understand this story, you have to know two things: The South Sider had a beautiful daughter who dated a handsome dark-haired young man, and there’s a local crime family I’m going to call the Samuelses, because that’s not their name. The Samuelses were involved in a series of car-bombings. Anyway, the South Sider put up with the parking-spot stealer for weeks. He tried to set the guy straight, but nothing worked. The newcomer stubbornly parked in the South Sider’s spot. Finally, the South Sider had enough. He went over to the guy’s house and said, “Look, you can park where you want. It’s your right. I just wanted to let you know my daughter is dating a Samuels.” After that, the spot was untouched.

  When the weather turns nasty, the parking wars grow fiercer, and the spots become more precious. That’s why people were digging out their parking places and marking them with skulls and crossbones. I looked outside and saw my neighbor Janet, bundled up in a down coat and a heap of knit scarves. She’d been shoveling the spot in front of her house for two hours, ever since her husband Kevin left for work. Forget Romeo and Juliet. When a woman shovels snow for her man, that’s true love.

  As I watched, Janet finished the job, salted the spot and went up to the porch to get the two folding chairs she was going to use to mark her place. That’s when I saw a woman pull right into Janet’s freshly cleared parking place, just like she owned it. It was Melanie, who lived in the superrich suburb of Ladue, where people have servants and snow removal services. We’d all been watching her romance with Jim, a downmarket South Sider, and this was the second time this week her little red Miata had been parked in front of Janet’s house. Obviously, Jim hadn’t spent the time clueing her in on local customs. Melanie didn’t realize she was claim-jumping. Or maybe she did and didn’t care. After all, Janet was standing right there. I thought Janet was going to hit her with the shovel. Janet yelled, but Melanie ignored her, and sailed into Jim’s house, twitching her little fox-fur-covered tail. Janet rang Jim’s doorbell. Melanie came to the door. They had some kind of conversation. I could tell it was angry, because Janet was waving the shovel. But Melanie shut the door firmly. She did not move her car.

  Janet, still angry, gathered up her shovel, her folding chairs, and her bag of salt and went inside. I knew Janet too well to expect her to a
ccept this defeat. She was going to do something. I had to know what it was. Every half hour or so, I’d pass by the front window and check out Melanie’s Miata.

  Two hours later, Janet was back outside with her green garden hose. She hooked it up to the spigot by the front porch and turned on the water. Then she stood out by Melanie’s car and began watering her yard. The fight over the parking spot must have driven Janet out of her mind. Was she crazy?

  Like a fox. The water splashed all over Melanie’s car. Janet kept watering her yard, until the Miata was thoroughly wet. Water was dripping off everything on the car, from the door handles to the bumpers. Some of it was already turning to ice. The windshield had frosted up quick. Then Janet turned off the water, rolled up her hose, and went back to the house. I called Janet the minute she was inside. “I’ve been watching this drama all morning,” I said. “It’s better than a soap opera. Give me the latest chapter.”

  “You saw me shoveling out a spot for Kevin when he comes home,” Janet said.

  “I did. I was touched. I’m not sure I’d do that for Lyle.”

  “Then you must have seen that rich bitch pull into my spot like I’d been shoveling it for her. I was standing right there. She refused to move the car.”

  “Didn’t tip you, either.” I took a chance with a joke, but Janet kept talking.

  “I followed her to Jim’s house and said, ‘You are going to move.’ She said, ‘I’ll try,’ in that baby voice of hers.

  “I said, ‘My husband gets home at five and you will be out of there.’ She said, ‘I’ll try,’ in that soft, infuriating way. I told her she had two hours to move. She didn’t. So I called the police. I wanted her arrested for stealing. The officer explained that the police couldn’t do anything. ‘There is no law protecting your spot,’ he said.

  “Then the officer said, ‘There is also no law that says you can’t water your lawn in February. If her car happens to be in the way, that’s too bad. You’d be surprised what that water does. It freezes doors and locks. It freezes wipers to the windshield and tires to the ground.’

  “I said, ‘But won’t the police arrest me?’

  “The officer said, ‘For what?’

  “I took his name, just to be on the safe side, and then you saw what I did.”

  “You watered your lawn.”

  “Yep. Too bad her car was right there. I’d say she has an inch of ice all over.”

  About four o’clock that afternoon, Melanie flounced out to her Miata, wearing her fox fur coat. By that time, her car looked like a Sno-Kone. The street around it was a skating rink. She skated up to the car and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. She yanked the handle hard, slipped, and went down right on her butt. Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.

  Melanie went back inside. When she came out again, she was wearing one of Jim’s old winter coats. She had a can of deicer, a knife, and three scrapers. She set to work chipping the ice off her little red car, but it was slow going. It took thirty minutes to free her windshield wipers. I could see Janet peeking through her miniblinds on the second floor. I started giggling. Then I was laughing, hard, for the first time since Burt and Ralph died. God, I loved this city. It was a theater, just for my entertainment. When Kevin came home at five, Melanie was working on the driver’s door. And I was working on my Snow Wars column. I felt alive again.

  Two days later, the temperature shot up to fifty-five degrees. Only rags and patches of snow remained. People packed up their parking-place markers, the broken lawn chairs and death’s head signs. They put away their anger, too. Janet even smiled at Melanie, but the Ladue-ite ignored her, preferring to nurse her grudge. Maybe Melanie would make a good city woman after all.

  My own sadness was also going, melting like the snow. But something about Ralph’s death bothered me, nagging at me like a name I couldn’t quite remember. I figured if I didn’t try to force it, whatever it was would come to me.

  That night, I had the dream again about Ralph dying in the plaster-covered room. I saw his dusty hair. I saw his ladder. And when I woke up, I knew what I didn’t see and nobody mentioned: Where was Ralph’s inhaler? Even if it was empty, it would still be around somewhere. Ralph didn’t take out the trash—he drove it.

  When Ralph rehabbed a house, he dumped his burger bags, chicken boxes, and soda cups in the room where he was working. When he cleaned up the room and literally shoveled out the old broken plaster, the trash went out with it. I was sure he’d toss his old inhalers in with the mess, too. And an orange-and-yellow Proventil inhaler would be easy to spot, even in that gray dust.

  I went by Ralph’s mother’s house to ask if an inhaler had turned up in his effects. Billie did not answer the door at her little gnome’s house. Instead, her gray guard, wearing the same gray dress, came to the round-topped wooden door. She was still on duty, protecting Billie from any more pain. It turned out that she was Billie’s sister Dorothy from Minneapolis.

  “Billie is finally asleep after a bad night,” she said in a half whisper. “I don’t want to wake her up unless it’s important.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t want to bother her. I just have a question and you can probably answer it. Did any of Ralph’s inhalers turn up in his things?”

  Dorothy didn’t ask why I wanted to know.

  “No,” she said. “We got his wallet and some things back, but there was nothing like that.”

  “Can I check Lucy?”

  She smiled at the truck’s name, then looked sad, as if remembering the man who named Lucy was dead. “Sure,” she said. “Lucy is still parked where you left her. She’s not locked. I’ve been meaning to go out and tape up that broken window.”

  I took the hint and offered to do it for her. Dorothy sent me out armed with a roll of silver duct tape and a dark plastic garbage bag. Poor Lucy looked more forlorn and faded than ever. Along with her broken window, the front bumper seemed to have developed a definite droop on the driver’s side.

  I opened the door. Yeech. Even with the ventilation from the broken window, the truck smelled like old White Castles. They’re good going down, but the leftovers can smell like sweaty armpits. There was a greasy bag on the seat, with a half-eaten Castle, an empty fry box, and a pile of wrappers and pickles. Next to it was an empty Big Gulp. I scooted across the seat, careful to avoid any glass chips.

  God, Ralph was a slob. How could he do such exquisite work and live in the bottom of a trash barrel? Under the White Castle bag was a fragrant pile of order forms, estimate sheets, and envelopes. Stuck inside one envelope was a spiral notebook Ralph evidently used as an appointment book. I flipped through it and found some notes in pencil for the last days of his life. The whole year, fifty-two weeks, was neatly marked out by hand with a ruler. His handwriting was clear and readable, another surprise.

  I saw these appointments:

  “L. estimate. Tue. noon”

  “Meet F. at Gr. Tues. nite.” That was Burt’s wake at the Grand Funeral Home.

  “Utah—Meet Ed Wed. ten A.M.”

  Who was Ralph meeting Wednesday morning at the Utah Place job? Who was Ed? There was no clue, not even an initial for a last name, and he didn’t mention anything to me. I thought guiltily about Ralph’s question that I never answered. I didn’t have a clue, except that it was about someone Ralph thought I worked with, and I didn’t work with anyone named Ed.

  I came across a Walgreens receipt for a Proventil inhaler dated the Friday before he died. But no inhaler. I did unearth a fried chicken receipt dated September 27, 1995. That’s how long Ralph kept junk around. I should have found an inhaler, but there was nothing, not even a used one. I even checked the glove compartment. Ralph may have been the only person on earth who actually kept gloves in there—two pair, one wool knit and the other brown leather driving gloves.

  That afternoon, I called Jamie. “I know you said Ralph didn’t have an inhaler in his pocket when you found him at the Utah Place house. Was there one anywhere around, maybe on t
he floor or with his tools?”

  “No, but I wasn’t looking for one,” Jamie said. “All I saw was Ralph, lying there. Then I called 911.”

  “Who owns that house?”

  “A young woman lawyer, an EEOC expert. Just won that big judgment for race discrimination. Her name is Sandra.” Jamie gave me Sandra’s office number.

  I had one more question. “Did you know Ralph had an appointment Wednesday morning at the Utah job with someone named Ed? Did he ever mention an Ed to you?”

  “No,” said Jamie. “But we weren’t close enough to trade that kind of information anymore.” He sounded sad when he said that. “Gary gave Ralph a good funeral, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did,” I said.

  “I miss him,” said Jamie, and hung up before I could answer.

  Sandra the lawyer returned my call at home that evening. She missed Ralph, too, for different reasons. She couldn’t find anyone she trusted to finish the job on her Utah Place house. “The last contractor I talked to told me I should drop the twelve-foot ceilings and tear out that old molding,” she said. “He didn’t care about my house the way Ralph did. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do. I wanted to move in at the end of March, when my apartment lease is up.”

  I gave Sandra a couple of rehabbers’ names, then asked if she’d let me look around the house for his family, to see if he’d left anything behind.

  Like an inhaler.

  “Sure. You’d do me a favor if you packed up his things,” Sandra said. “There’s a toolbox and a radio and some other odds and ends. I feel guilty. I should have taken them to his mother by now.”

  It wasn’t often I was invited to snoop. Now Sandra regarded my nosiness as a public service. We aim to please. “How do I get in your house?”

  “There’s a key on a nail by the garage door,” Sandra said. “It opens the kitchen door. Have a look around, and don’t forget to turn off the lights.”