Blood in the Water and Other Secrets

by Janice Law

  But then Wednesday he was standing on the sidewalk when she came out. He put his hand on her arm, and she pulled away and ran to her car. I saw that and it figured. He’d been hanging around too much for a guy who wasn’t in the market for nails or lumber.

  Thursday I didn’t see him but the car was there. A Ford, one of the big new ones. I know cars, drove limos for a while, but I couldn’t stand sitting cooped up. His car is HXT 030. This time I wrote it on the calendar in big letters and pointed it out to Ellen.

  “License plate?”

  Ellen’s quick.

  I nod.

  “Someone bothering you?”

  Shake my head. Point out the window.

  She goes and looks but there’s nothing. Mrs. Alvarez has gone home, and he only comes when she’s at work. He’s in the grass. He’s hunting. Ellen frowns and looks uncertain. She finally brings the pad and a pen.

  Hold pen straight. Press down so it doesn’t shoot away at an angle. Bothering Mrs. Alvarez comes out as Boting msAlVEez.

  Ellen looks at this, looks at me. “Mrs. Alvarez? Listen, her husband was a cop. If she doesn’t know the police, who would? We best stay out of it.” She puts on the nature show for me. Eagles of the World tonight.

  Eagles soaring with eyes like search lights. Tired. I forget the cops, the drug raid. Jimmy Alvarez. Words gone, ideas gone, memory going into holes like swiss cheese. On the screen, a monster eagle, big as a nightmare, fishes in Siberia, and I remember why the Alvarez shooting was controversial. It was a friendly gun, no, no. A minute, a minute more. Another eagle lands on what looks like a small ice berg. An eagle of the mind that tells me, friendly fire: another cop shot Jimmy Alvarez. Ellen had forgotten to mention that.

  The next day I pick up my portable phone. Ellen has it programmed: her number; Ginny, my daughter’s number; Kevin, my son’s number; 911 and Meals on Wheels. This makes her feel good, although I can’t really use the phone. I can listen to Ginny and Kevin all right; awkward calls, their voices, unanswered, are affectionate but uneasy. As for the rest, I don’t know what good 911 would do me.

  Still, Ellen means well. You won’t need the phone book, she said, and she put it in the kitchen, the Long March. So, up. Walker. Today I remember walker without trouble. That’s a hopeful thing. One day a word is gone, the next it’s back. Forward march to the kitchen. Get the phone book. Drop it. Drop it again. On the third try, hang the damn thing over the bar of the walker. Good thing we have a small town, a thin directory. Change direction, hard as turning a sixteen wheeler. Back to the chair and the big project of sitting down. Then, no paper. Exhausted.

  I maybe fall asleep— I sleep easily and often— but I’m visited by eagles hunting. Hunting means lions, and I’m alert again and consult the book. Print small and wobbling. No good. Try the Yellow Pages. Ah! Nice black type and good sized, too: Bradford Lumber, Your Place For Wood. I write the number on the calendar.

  Late on the Monday afternoon he’s back: HXT 030. I can see the car, panting with exhaust, parked just up the street. He’s waiting. I press in the numbers.

  You have reached Bradford Lumber. For the yard, press one, for hardware, press two, for the billing office, press three.

  Press three. Hear Mrs. Alvarez. “Hello. May I help you? Bradford Lumber.”

  I hang up and call again. Three times. This must make her nervous. I can tell from her voice, and I feel bad. But then I see her pass the corner window on her way to the front door.

  She must have seen his car, because at 4:30 pm, she leaves with the boss, Henry Johnson, who’s not all muscle like the hunter but big enough to give you pause. HXT 030 starts to get out of his car, sees Henry, and drops the idea. Henry walks Mrs. Alvarez to her car as HXT 030 drives away. I have the eagle eye all right.

  So that’s how it is. Every day, I watch for lions. When he drives up, I press in the numbers and her phone rings. She doesn’t always go to the door; she knows the signal now, but I’ll bet she can’t guess where it comes from. She should call the police. It bothers me that she doesn’t.

  One day Ellen arrives early. The windows are open, and I hear the horn, then voices. Ellen has a good loud voice when she needs one.

  .” . . blocking the drive way. I need to get in. I have a client . . .”

  Lower voice in reply. A man, not too pleased. I get myself up and turn the walker and look through the glass in the front door. Ellen’s signalling to get into the drive and giving a big guy in a familiar dark Ford what for.

  .” . . police business doesn’t need to block this driveway,” she says and HXT 030 pulls away.

  “So,” she says when she comes in. “You don’t have to worry. Police business.”

  I must not look convinced.

  “Police. He’s plainclothes, maybe undercover.”

  Ellen is fond of thrillers and cop shows and knows all the lingo.

  “But even if he’s on a stake-out, he doesn’t need to block your driveway. What if you were taken ill?”

  I nod, but I’m worried. How to watch both the front and the lumber yard. I wonder if “safe days” just means he’s out of my sight. There must always be lions on the veldt. Always.

  Just before Ellen leaves, Kevin calls. He tries to call while she is here so he can get a report. “Your dad has a little more energy,” Ellen says today. “He’s taking more interest.”

  I smile and nod to encourage her. She does not mention what the interest is, and I smile about that, too, before she gives me the phone.

  Kevin tells me how he’s doing at work. How Timmy is managing on the baseball team, that Patty’s joined the band. I’ve gotten used to listening without answering, and it’s nice in a way. I get to hear him thinking, which you don’t always do when you’re flapping your mouth.

  “Games, remember all the games, Dad? Soccer, hockey. You used to time for the hockey team. Remember the air horn? That was the height of my ambition: to operate the air horn at the rink.” He laughs and I laugh, too.

  When I hang up, I grab the walker and set out for the hall closet. Thump down the walker, step, thump, step, thump: a journey. I open the door, a tricky maneuver, then I’m faced with the clutter of forty plus years and two kids. If Bess were alive, this would all be tidy.

  I stand and think about Bess for a bit, before I take an old hockey stick and start poking here and there. Down come baseball gloves and garden tools and winter scarves the moths have been after and mouse traps and floor polish. Ellen will have something to say when she sees this.

  And then, there it is. A blue and white can . . . canster . . . canister! My old air horn. I get it off the top shelf with the hockey stick and tease it out into the hall. I nudge it over toward a kitchen chair where I sit down so that I can— yes!— pick it up. Daily life’s an epic if you live long enough.

  Rink, smell of chemicals and ice, sound of skate blades and thump of pads against the boards. Kevin, rosy faced beside me, clutching the air horn. Is it time, is it time yet? My eyes on the stop watch, counting down, seven, six, five, four . . . Kevin holds the horn away to the side as he’s been taught . . . two, one. A hoot that would take your head off. His smile. Pure joy.

  I give the can a shake and push the trigger, quick and gentle. Nothing. Shake again. Push, harder this time. Nothing. I set it on the table and start writing a note for Ellen.

  The next day, she’s not sure this is such a good idea. She’s thinking neighbors and the tenants on the second floor and Social Services. Anything I want that she doesn’t gets the same response: You don’t want Social Services involved, do you?

  Careful, I tell myself. Don’t mention HXT 030 or I’m out of luck. I point to the phone and shake my head.

  “That’s true,” Ellen says.

  I point to my throat, my mouth.

  “Yes,” she admits, but first she tries to push the Lifeline Button the local hospital distributes.

  I point to the phone, the weak link in all these plans. She argues it out with herself and then I write do
wn the name of the sporting goods store, and she promises to bring me a new air horn. Which she does. The same brand, even, and at the slightest touch it gives a shriek like a steam locomotive. I put it by the window, because by this time there’s been a new development.

  I almost missed it. HXT 030 hadn’t been around for a while. I’d maybe see the car passing, driving by, but no more office visits. No more standing out on the side walk. He was hidden deep in the grass until the evening National Geographic repeated Sea Turtles, Wonders of the Spring. Grand reptiles, no doubt, but I prefer fur and feathers.

  A warm night. I get the side window open and sit down to listen to the starlings and sparrows in the hedge.I don’t bother to put on the light. Eyes closing. Outside, twittering and the occasional car passing, and inside, a memory of large olive colored turtles paddling over reefs. Paddling, slowing, braking. A car stops. Two car doors open and then I’m right awake. Something makes me grab the walker and begin the big project of getting up and turning around. It’s him: right there on the sidewalk, standing beside a guy I know, a suburban psychopath named Gippy Dorgun, who got chucked off our local junior hockey team for going after a ref with his stick.

  That was the better part of twenty years ago and I remember it like yesterday— better than yesterday, to tell the truth. I’ve forgotten a lot since then, but Gippy’s learned nothing except the value of a good lawyer.

  They’re talking quietly together right there on the driveway of the lumber yard. I can’t make out the words, but I see Gippy nod. It is him, I’m sure. You don’t forget someone skating toward you with his stick over his head.

  Arrest? Maybe an arrest? Could I be wrong, wrong entirely about HXT 030? I’m sure I’m not, and yet I worry even after I see the big fellow clap Gippy on the shoulder, as if something’s been settled. They get into the car and drive away.

  The next few days there’s nothing. Nothing out front of the lumber yard, nothing so far as I know out front of my house. No voices in the night. Maybe I was wrong, dreaming. Maybe there are only sea turtles, drifting placid, not lions. Still, I keep watch every afternoon. It’s warm now; I sit on the porch looking both ways. With my air horn.

  Red behind my eyes, green circles, green like turtles, bleaching out to pale yellow, to the grass, no, no, to the veldt, the lions. I hear lions and open my eyes. I doze in the afternoon, especially in the strong spring sun. The pretty vines haven’t really leafed out yet on the porch; the roses took winter death. Is that the right word? Would Bess have called it winter death? She was the gardener.

  A squeal of brakes, a car door opening but not closing, Gippy Dorgun on the sidewalk heading toward the lumber yard office. Friday afternoon. Payday. A hockey stick in his hand? No, no, that’s at the rink, long ago. But I’m awake, and he’s carrying something. A friendly gun? Friendly fire. I reach down for the air horn. Smooth side of canister. I squeeze the trigger.

  Gippy stops at the door. Memories for him, too. Ice and the rink and the sound of the horn. He skated pretty well; he was just psychotic. I hit the horn again. He goes inside anyway, which is what psychotics do. A minute later a cop car roars up and neighbors look out and the go car, the going car, the getaway car, which I guess it is after all, peels off, leaving rubber all down Station Road, before horns and squeals and a shriek as a pickup truck turning into the yard loses some essential metals.

  There’s a shot and another. I keep up with the horn until a guy in uniform runs over to the porch and says to knock it off, the excitement’s over. I try to ask about Mrs. Alvarez, but everything comes out wrong. I wave my hands and grab a pencil and take special care and get Mrs. Alvarez OK? printed out mostly all right.

  The cop gives me a funny look, as if he doesn’t think I’m all there. People do that when you can’t speak. Fortunately Ellen arrives and takes over the way she does. “His friend, Mrs. Alvarez. He’s worried about Mrs. Alvarez. She works in the lumber yard office.”

  It’s a good hour before Ellen can find out that Mrs. Alvarez bolted as soon as she heard the “siren.”

  Ellen looks at me and says, “We’ll hear from Social Services for sure.”

  But I have some ideas about why a siren panicked a cop’s wife, and

  I write down, Lion kills with friendly fire. A message with a good many errors in it.

  “Lion?” says Ellen, worrying I’ve maybe taken another bad turn, a mini-stroke, an aftershock.

  Tired from all the excitement, that’s for sure. From cops and shots and Mrs. Alvarez running like a wildebeest. HXT 030 I write on the pad. And that’s as clear as anything I’ve ever written.

  Ellen grabs the paper, my she’s quick, and tears it up. “Say nothing,” she said. Then, “You saw a gun.”

  It takes me a minute to figure this one out.

  “You saw a man with a gun and you let off the air horn to warn everybody. That’s all.” A significant look.

  I nod. That’s okay with me, if Mrs. Alvarez is safe.

  “The police will come,” Ellen said. “Maybe the guy in the car, too. You understand?”

  I do. And he does. While Ellen hovers over me, fussing at the cops and giving me warning looks, I labor to print out lion gun.

  “He saw the gun,” Ellen tells them quick before I can scratch out more.

  She adds I’ve had a severe stroke, that I’ve lost words. On this big hint, I close my eyes and drop my head, while Ellen tells them how well I manage and describes my rehab. I can tell she’s worried about the air horn, Social Services, and grumpy neighbors, but the police are pleased. Except for HXT 030, who is Detective Brannak. Even with my eyes half closed, and words all gone to hell, I can tell that.

  But what can he do? Alert Septuagenarian Helps Foil Lumber Yard Heist. Right in the local rag. Ellen is thrilled. The kids and grand kids are impressed to death. I’ve been a good citizen, an eagle. One of the alert.

  So’s Mrs. Alvarez and that gets me thinking again soon as I hear the news from Ellen. I sent her to get new batteries for my TV remote and hoped she’d come back with gossip. She didn’t disappoint me.

  “She’s gone, left town, left her job, gone,” Ellen repeats, full of surprise. “Gone back home to Puerto Rico with her baby! What do you think of that?”

  Ellen doesn’t approve, but I think it’s smart. A wise decision for a moment when Gippy Dorgun’s dead and Detective Brannak’s still a cop in good standing.

  Gives me something to chew over, that’s for sure. Did Brannak get her husband killed? Was he trying to romance her? Did he plan to shut her up permanent? Was he always a lion or have I been dreaming. I can’t decide. Maybe I should have ignored good advice and printed out Gippy Dorgun’s name and HXT 030 and seen what the cops would say to that.

  But I may find out yet. I still see lions, and I keep my air horn handy. He’s out on the veldt, and I’m the one he’s watching now.

  The Summer of the Strangler

  It was hot. A Bermuda High had stalled over the Connecticut River valley for the better part of a week, trapping a big dome of stagnant air in which exhaust from thousands of commuters’ cars and SUVs hung like a giant plume of cigarette smoke. Everyone was exhausted and short tempered, sick of the heat which showed no signs of ending, sick of the gritty smog that insinuated itself into eyes and noses; sick of being inside, if there was air-conditioning; sick of the still air, if there was none.

  In the evenings, the humidity stayed ferocious but the heat dropped, and people cautiously opened their windows and sat on porches and balconies and walked along the edges of the parks. The edges, note, and under the lights. When they came back to go to bed, they checked all their windows and doors, shut their porch sliders and locked them, too, because that summer there was something outside worse than 98% humidity and record-breaking heat. Everybody, especially women, knew all about the new security drill.

  “Lock doors and windows; use security bars; check the identity of everyone who comes to your door; screen phone calls.” Debra Aken knew the routine by heart:
the words came unbidden to her mind as she moved the newspaper with the big, black Strangler’s Seventh? headline off the beauty salon chair and sat down to let a variety of expensive potions do their work. Tall and well built, devoted to the gym and fitness, Debra was not a nervous woman, but even she had found herself taking precautions, checking the dead bolt at night, and nagging Lance about locking the French windows and the sliders that opened to the patio.

  Of course, Lance was hopeless at that sort of thing; details were not now, and never had been, his forte, a personality trait which Debra alternately found irritating and endearing, but which had secured his devotion. Yes, she thought she could say that. She thought she could.

  “Frown lines, frown lines,” handsome Mr. Jose warned as he went by with another customer, and Debra gave him a smile that showed all her teeth and shut him up. She wondered why the hell she’d come to the beauty salon anyway when it was pressing 100 outside. Did she really need the works— streaking, setting, styling? It was in the back of her mind that Lance with his chronic disorganization, domestic helplessness, and fiscal impracticality could damn well take her as she was.

  She lifted the latest chapters of his new novel from her briefcase. The books were all much the same, sexy, violent, convoluted, and profitable. Lance came up with the plots, characters, and raw, very raw, copy. She put his effusions into recognizable English, cleaned up the spelling, and caught inconsistencies, for her husband was quite capable of changing his heroine’s last name from one chapter to the next and of altering the hero’s car within a paragraph or two. Once the manuscript was readable, Debra conducted negotiations with the publisher. She and Lance were a team, and they were very successful.

  Chapter seven of Deadfall began with the hero, Matt Dillard, an ex-CIA agent turned Silicon Valley Entrepreneur— all Lance’s characters were involved in Big Espionage and Big Business— at play with his chief rival’s wife, the glamorous, sexually voracious, Cynthia Lamont. Debra tidied up three dangling participles and altered a misplaced modifier which suggested that Matt was caressing the wide screen tv instead of the bodacious Cynthia.