War in a Beautiful Country

by Patricia Ryan

  But none of this was on her mind today: Nina thought only about her sister:” Poor Regina, those bomb threats she receives are very frightening indeed. It must be shattering to live in a world where you never know what will happen next, and worry constantly that you’ll be unprepared to survive whatever it is.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  i.

  `”So what do you think....” Det. Walker asked Nina,”....think your sister could be setting up this bomb thing...or whatever the hell it is....herself? ...All artists are a little strange as far as I’m concerned...so maybe...I don’t know...maybe she’s doing it for the attention...like the guy who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge because nobody would pay any attention to his plays. He lived, but as far as I know, his plays died.”

  Det. Walker was always amused by himself. He did not amuse Nina.

  She knew Regina did no such thing. Although, Nina did believe her sister was slightly delusional when it came to her “art.” She thought Regina merely had a craft that she mistook for a talent.

  “You,” Nina said to Walker, “are a moron.”

  “Now, that’s not going to help your sister,” he said.

  “You’re not helping my sister,” Nina replied. “Somehow you seem to think this is not a serious matter, that she is not being seriously threatened. And I don’t understand why.”

  “Because real bombs are going off all over the place. We’re thinking this thing of your sister’s is a little goofy.”

  “Goofy!! If you think it’s so ‘goofy’, why are you here,… wasting my time with your snide indifference ….” She was goaded into rudeness by her sister’s frustration and disrespect for this man. “….And apparent incompetence!”

  Det. Walker had been so taken aback by Nina from the first moment she opened the door, putting him off balance by making him look down and seeing her sitting there in her flowered sundress, looking freshly showered, hair still wet , skin still dewy, that—surprisingly-- nothing she could say made him angry. In fact he would be shocked at himself if he had any inkling why this was so.

  Nina’s first reaction to another person generally was hostility, trained into it by strangers who usually meant trouble of one kind or another for her, who always required some sort of stressful negotiation to compensate for their mutual mobility differences. Two minutes with the able-bodied could make Nina cranky as hell. She had no reason to believe this detective would be an exception.

  But, in fact, her difficult, confrontational manner mysteriously excited Walker, unaware as he was of scientific findings that the sting of psychic friction between the sexes was a kind of passionate irritant that often made testosterone levels go up in men. Walker simply believed that sparring with Nina, a game which he thought he would surely win, could be fun. Like the snarling flirtation of jungle cats. He did not know that soon he would be driven into emotional territory far more dangerous than he could imagine, or ever want to handle.

  For now, however, he turned to the familiar gimmick he often used to regain control by taking a minute to work his watch. It was made of cold chrome and was threateningly enormous on his wrist, with almost as many controls as the cockpit of an airplane. To see the time, he first had to snap open a thick leather lid which covered the watch face, no doubt to protect it just in case his forearm was attacked by a ferocious animal deep in the African bush.

  Snap. Open. Push one button once to see the time. Push another button once to see the day. Push the first button twice to see seconds count off. Snap. Lid closed. Slightly later, open, snap, push time, push, push day, snap.

  It annoyed almost everyone who knew him.

  But on the job its excuse for silent deliberateness succeeded in intimidating the already guilty.

  Nina thought it was ridiculous.

  “...anyway,” Det. Walker continued, “maybe your sister isn’t doing it for artistic attention.. Maybe it’s for attention closer to home. I hear she is divorced. Maybe she wants her husband back. I could understand that.”

  “Look, Det. Walker,” Nina said, “my sister is not doing ‘it’ at all. The sooner that path is quit, the sooner you may be able to get on the right one.”

  “And what is the right one?”

  “Of course I have no idea. But I can guarantee that she, me, her friends, relatives, lovers, and ex-husband have nothing to do with it.”

  “Guarantee? And just how do you do that?”

  Nina threw up her hands, resigned. “Since you are already here, what can I do to help you solve this puzzle.”

  Det. Walker was actually taking this more seriously than he said. Sometimes these “goofy” situations provided leads to other important cases. You never knew. But now he had two separate problems to outflank: the would-be bomber and his exciting yet uncomfortable pull toward Nina. He would have to think up a plan to combine strategies.

  “Oh, we’re not going to solve it.”

  “Not solve it?! Why?!”

  “Without luck, that is...or a mistake....”

  “The mistake could be that my sister is killed!”

  “No. That won’t happen. I guarantee this is someone just toying with her.”

  “Guarantee? And just how do you do that?”

  ii.

  Michael Walker was always in the way of his own message.

  But only when he came out of disguise.

  Like many who feel awkward and unworthy to take part in an overrated society, Michael Walker used his profession as the vehicle to automatically transport himself into other people’s lives. He hid behind his detective shield the way a photographer hides behind a camera, or a reporter behind the power of the media. Their secret hope is that the doors into the lives of the accomplished or famous, which ordinarily would remain closed to them as the faulty individuals they are, will gladly open to usher them in, in the role their careers gave them.

  Walker was always in danger of becoming less than he seemed when he left his profession to wade into the treacherous shoals of his private inner life. So he seldom did. Even his wife had to put up with that. But Nina was about to cut off Samson’s hair. Not on purpose, of course.

  She had no idea any of this was going on.

  Walker seemed to love it that Nina was so unsoothingly direct. It made them exciting foes, possibly on the edge of becoming pals. But for as long as she was determined to take the upper hand in this connecting conflict, Walker was going to fight it. It had to be a control thing. To keep his strength he would have to maneuver himself as far back into his detective-ness as he could get. For protection. And power.

  But Nina had her own power. When you tell the truth to a manipulator, he becomes slightly afraid. Where is the trap? After all, who tells the truth!? Certainly not Walker who believed honesty gave other people too much warning.

  He needed to know Nina better. Experience taught him that the more he knew about his opponent, the less threatening the situation could be. In his work it was a matter of life and death to know if the figure in the dark hallway had a gun, if the informant bringing you the drug bust had set you up. Or if the woman who was making you dizzy had the antidote, hidden away in the deep recesses of her life, and all you needed to do was find it to be cured. Where did Nina keep those metaphorical scissors?

  “So you’re Regina Parker’s sister,” he asked. “Are you a Parker, too”?

  He hadn’t seen a wedding ring.

  “No,” Nina answered, surprised at the question, “that’s our maiden name. Regina went back to it after the divorce.” Although out of character for Nina, she went on. She chalked it up to hoping. she could give him just enough information so he would leave.

  “I’ve kept my late husband’s name,” she said, “It’s the simple way to deal with the world....passports, banks, the IRS, condo documents....”

  Walker studied the large and meticulously furnished apartment. “Looks like you were left pretty well off,” he remarked inappropriately.

  Det. Walker sat across from her in an ungainly
manner, knee to knee, both ankles turned in and feet flared out, his body hunched forward as if he were about to dance the Charleston from a seated position. He seldom realized how unattractive he was.

  Others could tell from the way he walked, moving from the waist down, carrying his upper body almost separately, and from the way that he ate a hot dog, his hand taking the bun by the throat as if strangling it as he held it close to his face and his mouth coming out to meet it, even though his lips were already full of the bite he had already taken, that he was probably immoral.

  “Tell me,” he suddenly said, “does your sister get a lot of phone calls where they just hang up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is your sister into drugs?”

  “No!”

  “A love triangle?”

  “No!”

  “Any bad deals with money? Is she a political radical, or against any ethnic or religious group?”

  “No! No! No! Can’t you ask a serious question! How does your continuing to be preposterous help my sister?”

  “Oh, everything helps.”

  “You’re a fool,” Nina said, rolling toward the apartment door with the clear intent of opening it to let him out.

  Fearing she may have gone too far, she quickly tried to pull back by saying, “Sadly, that seems to be all we have. Myself included.”

  Walker’s heart skipped again. Here was another way Nina’s net tugged at him. He had always imagined a lover who could share his contempt of the world.

  Himself included.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  i.

  Michael Walker’s wife was always looking out for what was best for her. Not only in an overall way--everyone does that. Human beings will get away with as much as they possibly can. Even those who care for each other. Det. Walker was well aware of that. But what bothered him about his wife was how she did it. It was as if she had been a deprived child and still felt the need to elbow her way to what she thought was more than her fair share.

  She was the woman on line in a crowded supermarket who would deliberately put a few things down at the checkout counter, and once the register was open and holding her place, would go back and forth to pick up more items, making everyone wait so she wouldn’t have to.

  She sold her old, used clothes instead of giving them away.

  She put information and opportunities out of the reach of others in case she wanted them for herself later, to be sure that nothing she could have would ever be kept from her. It was as if failing to be alert to the most she could get for the least she could give, would do her irreparable harm. She tried to make it seem as if she wanted nothing, but not so mysteriously, she wound up with everything.

  Walker hated how his wife slipped back and forth between this staunch grabby-ness to the whiny, helpless creature who couldn’t decide what to eat in a restaurant. She could switch from the set jaw of the hoarder to a bright face falsely interested in others, with a velocity that could make an observer a little seasick.

  She was manipulative, but not as manipulative as Walker, which he told himself, after all, was his profession. He believed his was a subtle virtue and that his wife’s was a crass vice. This did not sit well with him. Neither did their marriage.

  So, Walker had been back twice to see Nina, ostensibly about the notes.

  “Why hasn’t he been to see me instead,” Regina asked her sister, “Or at least to see me also?”

  “I don’t know,” Nina said. “I get the impression he thinks you may have something to do with it....for attention or sympathy from Marius...”

  “He’s a moron!!”

  “I told him that,” Nina said, “…but he just seemed to enjoy it.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The prison was in upheaval and locked down after the violence in the cafeteria, so he decided to take a break and temporarily re-group before sending Regina any more “love letters.”

  It wasn’t the fear of getting caught that made him careful, or at least as careful as he could be under the circumstances. It was just that if they found him out they would stop his only fun.

  So, of course, he never left fingerprints. He was never foolish enough to wear attention-getting gloves; besides where would he get them. Instead, he used the hem of his shirt around his fingers. It just looked as if he were drying his hands on his own clothes. It made his fingers a bit clumsy, but with patience he found a method to use self-stick stamps, and moisten the envelopes with water instead of licking them, and write with his wrong hand in a phony slant.

  He supposed if someone out there tried hard enough they might track him down, but he knew no one would try that hard. How much police work were they going to put into a few women making complaints about something that never happens.

  And even if they did try, the odds were still in his favor. At full throttle, they were lucky to find anyone, even when it was vitally important, like a known serial bomber, or a threat to national security.

  But he decided to keep a low profile anyway until everything calmed down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I need to talk to you…” Walker said to Nina over the phone, “…but…listen…I don’t want to get your sister’s hopes up…so you have to promise not to tell her about this….I need you to come to the station house and look at mug shots to see if you recognize anyone…from suspected bombers in other cases…who might have been in her vicinity…”

  “But the threats came from all over the country.”

  “Well, the guy might have been in her vicinity at one time. Somebody she said ‘no’ to in the wrong way… who can’t take rejection. Sometimes that’s all it takes, the obsession follows them.

  Maybe one of these guys was around her once on one of her jobs, since she goes to different places. Or at a party that you might have attended, too…”

  Nina was about to protest, but then thought the idea was not so far-fetched.

  “I would bring the photo books to you but there are too many of them.”

  That was not true. None of it was true.

  “I can help you,” Walker continued, “in and out of the car. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  Nina decided to wait for him at the curb. She hoped he would not be late. She was always in danger, sitting there alone in her wheelchair, of people eventually dropping money into her lap.

  But she didn’t want Walker in the house again. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Something made her uneasy.

  So, as uncomfortable as it was, waiting at the curb was better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Walker had a slight problem putting the wheelchair in the trunk of the car. He was at a loss how to fold and lift it, and even with Nina’s instructions he seemed to turn it into a living thing that fought back.

  “It’s awkward, I know,” Nina said, “and probably heavy.”

  “It’s not heavy; I’m just out of shape.” Walker laughed nervously, looking for a compliment.

  “I sure hope you don’t have to chase any bad guys,” was all she would give him.

  “Where exactly are we going?” Nina asked after he managed to jerk the car back and forth, inch by inch, out of a bumper-to-bumper parking space and head in, what seemed to Nina, the opposite direction from where she thought they were going.

  “That’s the thing,” Walker said. “. …there’s been a change in plans…”

  Nina sat up straighter into her seat belt.

  “..oh, don’t worry…” Walker had looked forward to this reaction, “…nothing serious….just a little detour. It won’t take much time. I have to stop by court to sign a statement before a judge on an old case that goes before her tomorrow…” He was making it up as he went along. “You know how it is. The law is the law.”

  “Is it on our way?”

  “Not exactly…”

  “Well, where is it?”

  “Queens.”

  “Queens! You’re taking me to Queens when your precinct is just across town!? You ca
n’t make decisions on your own like that about what you do with my time!”

  “Relax. It will be fun.”

  “I don’t want it to be fun!”

  “Well, we’re here now, ready to try and make some headway on your sister’s case. Don’t blow it, just because we have to circle around and make a quick stop.”

  “I don’t call going through the Midtown Tunnel to an entirely different borough ‘circling around’.”

  Walker laughed. Nina went seethingly silent. He let her stew. They drove surprisingly fast down Second Avenue until, like gophers, they scurried through the tunnel that took them from the ritzy apartments of Manhattan’s eastside, under the river in one of several life-giving arteries that tethered the islands of New York to each other, over to the low-level industrial sites of Queens. Walker drove fast enough to be outside the law.

  “Can’t you slow down?” she said.

  “Actually, I’m thinking of putting on my siren so we can go faster, since you indicated that you were in a hurry for one reason or another.”

  “I’m no longer in a hurry.”

  It was just what Walker needed. “Glad to hear it. Since it’s such a nice day, let’s check out the ocean at Jones Beach.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Walker did put on the siren and once outside the tunnel tried to speed along the Long Island Expressway, also known as The Longest Parking Lot In The World. They were slowed down by nearly stationary traffic, but the ear-splitting noise and the manic flashing red light made Walker’s car a self-contained ball of mayhem, and helped him lurch back and forth from lane to lane to lane to lane toward the Southern State Parkway and the stretch of sand dunes along the Atlantic Ocean.

  “This is kidnapping.”

  “No it’s not. That would make me a criminal, but that can’t be true since I’m an officer of the law.”

  Actually, it was a beautiful day. Having to go to the station house with Walker originally annoyed Nina, but the beach on a bright blue-sky morning was another story. They could smell the salt air even before the tall, wavy sea grass began to appear on the side of the road. They crossed another bridge and drove to a sandy indentation where the dunes were low and they could face the beach and the rolling waves. The sign said No Standing Anytime. Walker stopped there, turned off the car and opened all the windows. It was glorious.

  For a moment.

  Then Walker suddenly reached across her lap and unbuttoned the bottom button of her sweater.