by Ed Gorman
"Do you ever think of quitting?"
"Constantly. But social work is about all I'm cut out for. I spent ten years in the welfare department as a caseworker but one day something happened and I just quit."
"Bad, huh?"
"Terrible." Her hazel eyes got weary. "We found that this one worker had been sloughing off pretty badly. There were clients he hadn't contacted or visited in months. He got canned—which is a considerable achievement in the welfare department, believe me—and so we divided up his list to visit. One afternoon I go up the stairs of this really filthy apartment building—four flights up—and I get to the door and I knock and the smell is so bad I can't believe it. Even through the closed door. I tried the knob and it was open. I went inside and it was horrible. Garbage and the leavings of drugs and dogs all over the place. I called out for somebody but nobody answered. Several of the windows had been smashed open. It was about as cold as it is today. I walked all over that place looking in closets and under couches and in the bathroom so I could make a report. And then under the bed I found her. This little four-month-old baby girl—that's how old they put her age at later—and at first I thought I was hallucinating. I was down on my knees staring under the bed where her mother or whoever had left her and I just couldn't believe it. That's where the odor was coming from. The little girl was dead and bloated and all discolored and you could see where a dog had eaten parts of her away. I had kind of a breakdown. I hated myself for doing it but I couldn't help it. I took the seven weeks of vacation I'd accumulated and I went on one of those cruises where you stay drunk all the time and flirt with every man in sight." She offered me a rueful smile. "I wouldn't have blamed God for being pretty p.o.'d at me, carrying on the way I did, I mean."
"You make God sound like a pretty mean person."
"Sometimes he should be. He should be very mean to the woman who left that child to die under that bed. And he should be very mean to me for not being tougher." She shrugged fragile shoulders. "Anyway, I never did go back. St. Mark's had an opening as an assistant, so I took it. I don't have to deal with children here. I can't take seeing children hurt or killed. That's where my courage and compassion end. I think very uncharitable thoughts about adults who hurt children."
"I used to be a cop. I used to think of killing some of the parents I met. Sneaking up at night and killing them in their sleep."
"It wouldn't have bothered you, killing somebody like that?"
"Not in my fantasies it didn't. Maybe reality would have been different." This was one of those moments—adrenaline flowing—when a cigarette would have been nice. "I got sick of seeing children beaten and sexually abused."
"You sound as bitter as I am."
"I probably am."
"And you do what exactly now, Jack?"
"Work on security matters."
"That's why I'm having a hard time guessing why you're here."
As soon as I told her why, her friendly tone would disappear. She would be tight and suspicious and she wouldn't like me at all and I wanted her to like me. I thought of Donna and how she hadn't called for the first three days of her convention and I wanted this woman to like me a great deal.
I said, "I'm told you knew a man named Richard Coburn."
"My God."
"'My God'?"
"You're here because of Richard?"
"Yes."
"People told you I used to go over to the restaurant and that we'd get into arguments, didn't they?"
"Yes."
"And being a good cop, you want to know what we argued about right?"
"Right."
"My God."
"What?"
She seemed genuinely flustered, her cheeks faintly red. "I just can't believe I'm being implicated in this."
"You're not being implicated in this."
"Then why are you here?"
"To find out what your arguments were about."
"Right."
"Why don't you have another cigarette and calm down?"
"Please don't say that."
"Say what?"
"'Calm down.' I hate it when people say that. It always sounds so patronizing."
"Well, I'm sorry, but you seem genuinely upset and I hate to see you that way is all."
"Oh, yes, I'm sure you're a very sensitive soul."
"You really think I had that coming?"
The blush again. She sat up straight. She put her shoulders back. "I'm sorry. You're right. You don't deserve that." She took sharp tiny breaths. She was composing herself. "I guess it had to come out eventually. I'm just so ashamed. It's so—stupid."
"What is?"
"What I did."
"What did you do?"
"Went out with him."
"With Coburn?"
"Yes."
For some reason I felt disappointed and betrayed. It was dumb to feel that way, but there it was. "For how long?"
"On and off for a month."
"I see."
"He was everything I was supposed to hate. But there was something appealing about him. At first, anyway. He was still married—technically, at least—and he had a girlfriend named Jackie. He needed a friend, he said. He wanted me to be that friend. That's when he was most appealing, when he needed—help. He was almost like a little boy. I suppose I have this strong maternal urge. Anyway, I'd gone to the Avanti for a drink one night and that's where I'd met him and somehow we ended up in a booth and we were both sort of drunk and he looked very handsome in a rough way and I was very lonely and so it just sort of started. Of course we both agreed that it would be nothing more than a platonic thing and of course it immediately became something else. He started taking me to this motel, the Wanderleigh. My God, it was like being in college again. I fell in love with him. I couldn't help it. It was stupid and hopeless and I was ashamed of myself." She stopped and put a fingernail in her mouth and bit it. At least for the moment, she seemed to have run out of words.
"How long did it go on?"
"In high school I fell in love with a football hero. I hate football and I hate heroes. It was sort of that way with Richard. I didn't respect what he did for his living, or his values, but I fell in love with him anyway."
I said, "So how long did it go on?"
"A little over a month."
"He cut it off?"
"Yes. But not for the reason you think."
"Oh?"
"He was convinced I knew something about some letters he was receiving."
"What sort of letters?"
"That was just it. He'd get very angry and paranoid but he wouldn't tell me anything. Just that somebody from the shelter here was sending him letters."
"So you never saw the letters?"
"No."
"And he never told you their contents?"
"No. But he did start getting very abusive about homeless people. He started telling me that they were just bums who were too lazy to work. You know, the standard accusations. And his people started being very rough with them at their door. Pushing them away if they bothered the customers in any way. The homeless have rights, too."
I said, as gently as possible, "But they don't have the right to harass people. You may feel sorry for them and I may feel sorry for them but people going into dinner have the right to do that in peace, without being panhandled or insulted or threatened."
"And meanwhile the homeless starve."
"That's for government or places like yours to handle. It's not the responsibility of people going out to dinner or hurrying to work."
"You're a difficult man to read, Jack. Just when I think I've got you figured out, you surprise me."
"So what were your arguments about?"
She started gnawing on a hangnail. "Ostensibly about the way he was treating the homeless who'd wander by his place. One night it got very bad. One of the men who lived here on and off—he'd fall off the wagon for a couple of weeks at a time and then wander back here—was named Smiley. I was never sure if that was his real
last name or just some kind of ironic nickname because he was a sort of loser. He'd really go on crying jags late at night. Anyway, one of Richard's bouncers, a man named Ken, apparently beat up Smiley pretty badly. Smiley was panhandling and he could get pretty terrifying, I have to admit. A couple of the other men from the shelter saw all this and told me about it. Apparently, Smiley went off on another bender because we haven't seen him since. Anyway, the night after the Smiley incident, I went over and confronted Richard. I did it three or four different nights, actually. Of course I knew that at least part of my anger was because he'd dumped me. By then I'd identified the species—the man who needs conquest. He'd really suckered me in and I'd thought he might truly be this lost little boy with the rough exterior. But I was just another conquest. He'd probably never seduced a Catholic social worker before."
"You didn't see him after that?"
"I probably entertained the foolish notion that he'd start missing me and would call but he never did. And I really was angry about the way his men had started pushing our people around."
"Do you remember where you were the night he was killed?"
"My God," she said.
"What's wrong?"
"You're asking me for an alibi."
"Not really. Just for a little information."
"I didn't kill him."
"That's probably the truth."
"'Probably.' Now that's reassuring." She shot me a cute frown. "I really want to like you, Jack. I really do."
"Couldn't you tell me where you were the other night and still like me?"
"I suppose."
"So?"
"So I was here."
"In your office?"
"In my office and working at the front door."
"What happens at the front door?"
"On very cold nights—and with the wind chill factor it was a hundred below the other night—they line up around the block. We have to do the worst thing of all—actually turn some people away. Anyway, we were so busy I had to come in and help."
"I see."
"So you're thinking that in all the chaos I could have easily slipped out and walked down the two alleys that lead to the Avanti's rear parking lot and killed him."
"I suppose it could have happened."
"It didn't. And I'm going to like you despite yourself."
"I appreciate that."
"In fact, in the nicest way you remind me of this man I've had two dates with over the past week."
"You seem to be on a roll."
"He's an Army Colonel. He wants me to think he's tough but he's actually very sensitive."
She fit the Avanti pattern—everybody there had too many lovers and too little peace. She was a woman of parts and as such scared me suddenly—I couldn't find the center that connected the Catholic social worker dumbstruck by the sight of a dead infant beneath a bed and a rather superficial young woman who'd pursue somebody as risky and dark as Richard Coburn.
I stood up and walked over to the door. "If I have any questions later, I'll call you."
"I wish you'd call me anyway. Or I guess I do. Don't you get confused sometimes like that?"
"What about the Colonel?"
"We're not engaged or anything, the Colonel and I."
I nodded. "Well, I've enjoyed talking with you."
"Me, too, Jack. Me, too." Then she glanced at her desk in such a way that I knew she wanted to get back to her work. "Well," she said, pushing me out the door, "see you."
"Right," I said. "See you."
I walked down to the end of the corridor, passing men in ragged but clean clothes smelling of soup and Aqua Velva. Somewhere in the building breakfast was being made. The air smelled of sausage and eggs.
About the time I reached the doors leading to the vestibule, I had the sense that somebody was watching me. I turned around. There were too many people in the corridor to find him at first. But finally his eyes burned through all else and I saw him, peeking around a corner, staring at me with unfathomable loathing—the "priest" I'd seen in the back of the Avanti the first morning I'd checked the security system over for Richard Coburn. This morning he was clean and shaved and wore a flannel shirt and wrinkled gray work trousers. He also wore his Roman collar. He looked no less insane than he had the other morning.
I pushed through the doors and went outside into sunny winter whiteness, the fumes of diesel fuel tart on the morning air.
Chapter 11
For the next three hours I played boss at American Security. In high school, when I worked on loading docks and swept up grocery stores and detasseled corn on scorching summer farms, I always had the idea that it would be fun to be boss. You just sit back with your feet up on the desk and deal out fate like a poker dealer tossing out cards. Even when I was a cop, and should have known better, I thought that being a captain would be pretty cushy. No more freezing beats; no more heart-in-throat moments in dark alleys; no more emergency-room sorrows telling a sobbing woman that her drunken teenage son had died. Cushy job, being boss. But when I became the occasional substitute boss at American Security I learned the real facts. Being boss is no fun at all.
For the first hour that afternoon, I listened to three different fanciful stories about why three different workers couldn't make it in today—every excuse, it seemed, but being abducted by aliens. Then I took two calls from unhappy clients, the second one being especially acrimonious, a shopping mall manager who made up in ire what he lacked in literacy. Finally, and much as I didn't want to, I had Leonard Smythe come into my office, Leonard being the hapless security guard I was to fire if he was ever caught sleeping on the job again. Two employees reported finding Leonard asleep. My task was obvious.
He came in and said, "How they hangin', Mr. Dwyer?" which was his standard greeting, and then when he sat down he started picking his nose in a furtive annoying way and then sort of wiping it on the arm of the chair. He was apparently under the impression he was invisible. But just about the time I wanted to get up and go over and slap him around on general principles, I noticed for the first time the ketchup stain on his blue uniform shirt and I couldn't be mad at him anymore. Leonard was forty-three. He was thirty pounds overweight, bald, nearsighted, and he had breath that could peel paint. He was the big dumb clumsy kid who'd never grown up, much as he'd tried. These days the only assignments we could trust him with were patrolling malls during business hours. We figured that all the traffic would keep him awake. But now he'd managed to screw up even that.
"God, Leonard," I said.
"You're pretty pissed, huh, Mr. Dwyer?"
"Yeah, Leonard, I guess I kind of am, you know?"
"That's what my wife said. That you were gunna really be pissed."
"I mean it's nothing personal, Leonard. You know that."
"I know, Mr. Dwyer. You've got your job to do and all that."
"Why did you go into the theater, Leonard? It wasn't on your beat."
"I just like Clint Eastwood, I guess. And the girl at the counter always lets me in free."
"You mean you've done this before?"
"Uh, yeah, Mr. Dwyer, I have. I mean, I don't usually sit down and fall asleep. Most of the time I just kind of pop my head in and see a few minutes of the movie and then go back to work. Kind of like a coffee break but I have Good and Plentys and a Coke instead, you know?"
"Right."
"Well, yesterday I was real tired on account of my wife's rash."
"Your wife's rash?"
"Yeah, she's had this rash on her back and she can't sleep. She's either trying to scratch it or she's asking me to scratch it. So neither one of us has been getting much sleep."
"Ah.
"So anyway yesterday I go in to see a few minutes of this Clint Eastwood movie and I sat down and bingo."
"Bingo?"
"Yeah, I fell asleep."
"Right."
"And when I woke up the movie was over."
"Didn't the girl try to wake you up?"
"She got o
ff just about the time I went in. I guess the new girl just thought I was a regular customer."
I shook my head. "You know what the boss said the last time you fell asleep."
"Well."
"He said I'm supposed to fire you."
"I know, Mr. Dwyer."
I sighed. "Goddammit, Leonard."
"I know, Mr. Dwyer."
"Can't you drink a lot of coffee or something to stay awake?"
"Coffee always makes me pee like a racehorse."
"Well, how about caffeine pills or something?"
"They make me nauseous."
"Then maybe you should get some more sleep."
"Well—you know—the rash."
"Oh, right. I forgot. The rash."
"I don't blame you for being pissed, Mr. Dwyer. I don't blame you one bit."
"Has she gone to the doctor?"
"For her rash?"
"Right."
"Uh, no."
"Why not?"
"You know how much doctors charge for a visit these days? We just don't have that kind of money. Not unless we really get sick or something."
"Jesus Christ, Leonard."
"What is it, Mr. Dwyer?"
"This is making me fucking nuts. How much is a doctor visit?"
"Thirty-five dollars."
I took out my checkbook. I spelled his name right and I made the amount thirty-five dollars.
"Aw, Mr. Dwyer. You shouldn't do this. It's your own money."
"It's a Christmas gift."
"God, Mr. Dwyer."
"Go call your wife and tell her you're going to pick her up and take her to the doctor's." I leaned forward. "Leonard, if I'd actually fired you, what the hell would you have done?"
"Moved in with my brother-in-law, I guess. He's got a good job on the line at Rockwell. But then my wife would really be in trouble."
"Why's that?"
"'Cause my brother-in-law's whole family has got this rash. That's where my wife picked it up from."
"I see."
"Jeez, they make me uncomfortable just bein' around them."
"Scratching, huh?"
"All the time."
"Go, Leonard. Call your wife. And stay awake, all right, Leonard?"
"You're one hell of a guy, Mr. Dwyer."
"Leonard, how many times have I asked you to call me Jack?"
