My Detective

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  She lights the joint again.

  “When did you start smoking?”

  “In LA. I don’t do it much. But every now and then, like when an ex-husband dies, I like feeling a little fuzzy.”

  “Medicinal.”

  “Yes, that’s the word.”

  I turn and look at her.

  “If you think of anything else,” I say.

  “Of course,” she says. “I’m sorry you had to come all this way. I don’t imagine I was much help. I did love him, you know. Once. Do you think he felt any pain? The way he died, I mean?”

  “I don’t think so. It happened fast.”

  “People want to know that, don’t they? If someone felt pain. Is that compassion or curiosity?”

  “It’s human nature.”

  “Yes, it must be.”

  I head to the door; she floats to the kitchen. The elevator rattles down and I slip past the mailman and down the steps. I’m out in the rain. She looks down from her window and waves. Disappears. I walk to the corner, buy an umbrella and a New York Times from an African wearing a scarf and a Yankees cap. Trump. Russians. Women’s marches planned across the country. It’s nearly dusk. Candles burn in restaurant windows. The sounds of taxi tires rise and fade. Footsteps. Faces. So long since I’ve been here.

  When I returned from Europe after college, I lived in New York for a few months, holing up with a musician friend from Berkeley who had a band. I played piano on Radiohead and Pearl Jam covers, drifting from club to club in the East Village and across the river to Brooklyn. It was my “wild time,” as my mother said. I still smile at the conspiring way she said “wild,” as if it were something not of me, a gift she wanted me to taste. I understood why.

  My father’s death was hard to escape. It became, as my childhood went by, almost mythical—a memory of another world that left me with the outlines of a man. He boxed; he ran; he worked fishing boats; he died. The rest of him I filled in with a boy’s imaginings: trips to the beach, throwing a baseball, teaching me to drive, giving me a favorite book so I could know things that couldn’t be said, telling me about girls, which, in my mind, made us both blush. My mother wanted me freed of that. “You cannot remake him,” she said. “Let him be the way he was, and let him go.” But some things won’t let go, and others we refuse to release.

  Still, it was a good time back then in New York. I was understanding things: how the world fit together and how its pieces moved; the knowledge, even in its naïveté, that a young man accumulates on the way to what he is to become; those moments that lodge deep, as time and people slide by. It snowed a lot, and I lived my days in museums, a happy vagrant, learning shortcut alleys and smoking Camels on fire escapes.

  The band broke up, and I moved in with a punk-rock singer who wore a Blondie haircut and diaper-pin earrings. She talked about the genesis of sin and how the spiritual ecstasy of St. Augustine—“a blister of transcendence” was how she put it—turned sex into something evil. “It all goes to him,” she’d say, waving The Confessions while we strolled through the village. “Adam and Eve were just a weird little story until he came along. He condemned our natural desires, that little monk, who—and this is the killer—had his own mistresses and perversions. He went whoring in Carthage; don’t think otherwise. Stay away from anyone who repents, is my advice.” I said, “He was searching for grace.” She replied, “Why does grace always have to be against impulse?” She’d go on for hours, not just about St. Augustine but about any headline, book, or magazine article that defied her sense of the world. She said to me once, “You’re the quiet kind, which is good, but … Jesus, start yapping a little every now and then.” One day, she announced she was taking her band, the Lies, out on tour. She broke up with me a few weeks later, writing on a postcard from Ohio, “I don’t think it’s working.”

  I walk north, listening to rain rattle and thinking how different New York is from Los Angeles, how much older and deeper, the lives that passed through here in the century before, the ships from Europe sailing toward the towering light of a promised world—not like scrambling over a fence with scrub and desert ahead of you. I call Ortiz.

  “She knows.”

  “Ex always does. You think she did it?”

  “No. But she knows. Something was on his laptop. It was hacked.”

  “We got it in evidence.”

  “Not that one.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one in the ocean.”

  A famous Ortiz pause. I can see him biting his lip, fingering his mustache.

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about this Stephen Jensen character?”

  “I’ll talk to him when I get back. How’s the mayor?”

  “Little quieter since the funeral. Story’s died down a bit. But that chick from the Times keeps calling. Jesus, I don’t like her. Carver, we need an arrest.”

  “I know. Listen, though; since I’m here I’m going to take the train to Boston to see my mother. Just a day. I’ll go up tomorrow and be back in LA on Sunday.”

  “Jesus,” he says. Another long pause. “Okay, but it’s not the best time. I’ll cover for you for a day. But get your ass back here. This is what I mean when I talk about getting you a partner.” Another pause. “You haven’t seen your mom in a while. How is she?”

  “The same, I think.”

  I pocket the phone and keep walking. I meander all night, past headlights and ghosts leading me to Grand Central Station, where I board an early train north as the sky clears over Greenwich and the ocean breaks on dark rocks along the coast. I sip a coffee and feel rumpled. My feet are wet. One change of clothes in the backpack. But I know this terrain. Sun shines on the window. The seat next to me is empty, and I don’t know why but I feel rich and warm. I settle back and pull out a book of poems by Raymond Carver. I read one about a man standing on a bluff and looking over the ocean on a cold, clear morning. His thoughts fall away, and he loses himself. He tries to hold the moment; to stay suspended from intrusions of all he is and all he must do, but a flock of birds rises and leads him home. It’s one of the few poems I’ve nearly memorized. I’ve brought the book on this journey to my mother, who, many years ago, handed it to me and said, “There’s some in here you’ll particularly enjoy. You’ll see your father.” I took the book from her and read the poems over and over. She was right. He was there in the black lines, imperfect and carrying bits of shame.

  The train glides into South Station. The doors hiss open. I walk a dozen or so blocks and hail a cab to a brick row house with the green door and bronze knocker I remember from my childhood. My aunt Maggie hugs me and leads me to the kitchen, her favorite room, cluttered and unchanged for decades. She opens two beers and slides me a glass and a sandwich.

  “Tuna still your favorite?”

  “You know it is.”

  “How long can you stay this time?”

  “Just the night. How is she?”

  Maggie takes a long sip and purses her lips. She pauses for a second, closes her eyes, puts down the glass.

  “I think we may be losing her, Sam. She fades a little every day. Her eyes are more unsure. They jitter. When she looks at me, sometimes, I think she sees a stranger. She has good days too. Had one last week. She talked a lot and read and cursed at something in the Globe. She talked about you and your father and how she loved being young in Newport, although I never knew why, with your father being the way he was. Let’s not get into that. Anyway, Sam, she’s getting worse.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “It never changes with me. I’m good. Still strong. My left eye’s a little fuzzy. Cataracts, maybe. I like being with her.”

  “I feel …”

  “Don’t say it. You say it too much. I want to care for her. She’s my sister. I have no one else.”

  I wink at her.
/>   “You could have had that guy—what was his name? The professor.”

  Maggie smiles and sips, lets the mood lighten.

  “Jesus, him. It’s been years. I think he’s dead. Boating accident in China, someplace over there. I read it in the Globe. So many come and go, don’t they, Sam? Suppose we all do. You have anybody out there in LA? Any starlets?”

  “No.”

  “Two peas, huh?”

  Maggie pours the last of the beer into her glass.

  “How’s the money?”

  “There’s still money from your father’s inheritance,” she says. “We’re good, and with what you send, no problems. We’re flush, as they say.”

  She sips and looks around the kitchen. Her hair is gray and long, but in a way that fits her, falling around her, bringing out the color of her blue eyes. Five years older than my mother, she went gray early, and now the rest of her has caught up. Maggie was a traveler and a hippie for a while, marched against nuclear power, Reagan, domestic violence, and Iraq. Twice. When I was a child, her hands intrigued me; long and smooth, they moved like white fish in a current. They are like that still, only a bit spotted, the veins raised. Her beer is almost finished. She likes to let the last swallow sit for a while. My dad did too. And so do I.

  “You want to go up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Her naps are longer now, the medication. But she should be waking.”

  I follow Maggie up the stairs, past family pictures, my favorite being my mother, father, and me on a small sailboat, white chop of sea, wind in our hair, faces tan, the horizon hard and blue. Maggie opens the door. My mother sits in a chair looking out the window, books around her, charcoal drawings on a sketch pad.

  “They say,” Maggie whispers, “drawing is good therapy. Keeps the mind alert.”

  My mother turns, and for a moment her eyes don’t register. She leans forward and studies me.

  “It’s Sam,” says Maggie.

  My mother sits back and puts a hand to her mouth.

  “Sam,” she says. “My Sam?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  She stands and walks to me. She touches my face.

  “Your father’s out somewhere. I’ve been waiting, but I don’t know where he is. Have you seen him, Sam?”

  I hug her and kiss her on the forehead.

  “Dad died a long time ago.”

  Her lips quiver; she shakes her head.

  “I don’t think so, Sam. He was here yesterday.”

  “Sam’s come to visit for a day,” says Maggie.

  My mother looks around, uncertain. She lifts the sketch pad. Pencil strokes and scratches, eraser smudges. I can’t make out what the drawings are. They seem marks left by sporadic winds.

  “I’ve been trying to draw a bird outside the window. A little sparrow, but he won’t sit still. He flies around, and I can’t get him right. See? Look. His wings aren’t right. He’s so small. I don’t think sparrows live long, Sam. I’ll have to ask your father when he comes back. But he doesn’t usually know about such things. He’s a boxer. Did you ever see him fight?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “He’s beautiful. The way he moves, I mean. Even all cut and bloody, he is beautiful.”

  “He’s gone, Mom.”

  “Yes, he’s gone out somewhere. We should wait here.”

  She sits down with the sketch pad and looks out the window.

  “See, the sparrow’s back now.” Her pencil moves in a jagged line. “Oh, he’s gone again. He never stays on the branch long.”

  She quiets. I sit beside her. Maggie leans against the bed. The afternoon light is thinning. I feel a cold sliver through the window. The radiator kicks on, heavy with clatter, and then calms, warmth spreading over the room. The early white of the moon appears. Lights are coming on in houses, and I hear distant and approaching voices lifting off the sidewalk as I did when I was a child. They seemed full of mystery back then. We sit for a long while in silence. I put my hand on my mother’s and kiss her on the cheek. She turns and smiles, but I can tell she doesn’t know me. I am a shadow in the dying afternoon light. I tell her about the books we read together, the plays we went to (to New York on the train, after my father died) and about the short stories she wrote that were published in New England journals and later put into a book. She nods her head but doesn’t remember. She presses her face to the windowpane.

  “Is the sparrow there? It’s getting dark. I can’t see him.”

  “No, Mom, he’s gone.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  I help her up and we go to the kitchen with Maggie. We eat a dinner of vegetable soup, cheese, and shepherd’s bread. My mother is frail, bundled in a sweater. She wears slippers, and glasses dangle from a chain around her neck. Her silver-gray hair floats around her. She speaks of my father, certain he’s just gone to the store or out for a drink. “Sam’s in LA now,” says Maggie. My mother looks at her and at me. “That’s far, isn’t it? Is he Sam?” she says. “He’s the one in LA?”

  “Yes,” says Maggie.

  “Well, I hope you like it out there,” says my mother. “Are there sparrows in LA?”

  I go to the sink and look out the window. I brush back a tear. My father was a boxer, but my mother was grace, a boy’s protector. Maggie comes behind me and rubs my shoulder. “Some days she remembers so much. When you call and talk to her on the phone, I can see recognition, as if she’s trying to reach back and fit the voice to a face. It’s your father who’s always there, Sam. Like a ghost.”

  “For me too,” I say.

  I turn and look at Maggie, and she hugs me, and I feel like a boy.

  I kiss my mother good night. Maggie takes her upstairs and changes her into a nightgown. I hear my mother yelling, a short, angry, confused burst, like a child’s bedtime protest. She quiets. Maggie returns to the kitchen and makes tea; we eat pound cake with whipped cream.

  “What should we do?”

  “There’s nothing to do, Sam. She gets angry sometimes. Smashes things. A few times, she’s gotten very mean. She curses me. She called me an asshole, even worse. Can you imagine your mother speaking like that? I don’t want her to hurt herself. She can get so frustrated. But we go on like this. I can care for her. It’s not a burden. Those days when she remembers and I see a glimmer of her old self, that’s all I need.”

  “Those days will be fewer.”

  “Yes, but she’s my sister.”

  “I should move here.”

  “Don’t be silly. We’ve talked about this. If I can’t do it anymore, I’ll let you know. But I can.”

  “I love you, Maggie.”

  She looks away and then back to me. This is our conversation, our ritual, whether I’m here or calling from LA. Maggie assuring me the way she did when I was a child and she stood with my mother and me at my father’s grave, the three of us with flowers in the rain on the day after we buried him, when I demanded we go to the cemetery to make sure the dirt and new grass over his coffin had not washed away. I didn’t want him to get wet, and I kept seeing him in my mind, alone beneath me in the narrow dark.

  “So, what do you make of our new president?”

  Maggie’s face tightens; she shakes her head.

  “Please, Sam, don’t get me going. What have we done? Sometimes, I think we’re in a skit, you know, a farce that will end and the lights will come up and it will be over.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Let’s not talk about that crude, rude man and his silly circus. Imagine. Our president talks like he’s a thirteen-year-old boy with Tourette’s. No, Sam, let’s talk about anything else. How is it in LA? Must be ten years now.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Have you met anyone? I worry about you and the kind of work you do. I know you’re good at it, but you must carry a lot home. It’d
be nice to have someone there.”

  “I have girlfriends off and on. One of them said I was ‘shut down’ in my own space. I didn’t share enough, or something like that. It’s the work. Maybe it’s me.”

  “You’re getting sex, I hope.”

  She looks at me.

  “Don’t blush,” she says. “A person needs sex.”

  “Yes, Maggie, I am.”

  “The right one will come. She’s out there. Probably someone you’d never even guess. That’s the best kind, I think, the ones who come out of nowhere.”

  “You’re a romantic.”

  “Some nights. What case you workin’ on?”

  “A well-known architect was killed downtown. Not much to go on yet.”

  “Shot?”

  “Throat slit.”

  “Anything stolen?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Still reading crime mysteries, huh?”

  “When you started as a detective, I got into them. They give me a feel for what you do. I like the newer ones, but Chandler is still my favorite. That time. The way he saw it.” She wipes the table with her hand. “Your mom and I always said—and I know you know this because we’ve talked about it—that you became a detective to solve your father’s murder. Not that exactly, but you know what I mean. Armchair psychology, I know, but I think it’s true. He drew you to that.”

  I shake my head and smile. Maggie likes to talk like this. She likes to go deep, and I imagine all the stories and revelations told in this quiet kitchen, some involving me and other people I have never met but know by name and reference because they’ve been stitched into Maggie’s voice as she serves tea and cake.

  “A murder’s a story with an end, but you have to find the beginning,” I say. “I like that. Going back and finding. I wish they’d done that with Dad. Remember how I felt then? Not having an answer. Mom and I would go to the police station in Newport. Every week, we checked. They said sailors from a Ukrainian freighter probably did it. They’d shipped out the next day. That was it. They didn’t look anymore. They kept telling Mom and me they were doing everything they could. But my dad was dead, and I was a child with an unanswered why. There should be answers, you know, Maggie?”