Baby Please Don't Go: A Novel

by Frank Freudberg

  “It’s illegal?” she asked as she rose.

  “Well, it’s a gray area,” he said, knowing it wasn’t. “And we have to do this soon. Right away. This week, if I can get all the details arranged.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Not now.”

  Natalie darted around the apartment, gathering her few items of clothing and pulling them on.

  “Why this week?” she asked. “Afraid you’ll lose your nerve?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I’m afraid of Abby. He’s in his seventies, but don’t let his age fool you. He’s brilliant, and worse, his instincts never fail him. We don’t want him to have a shred of an idea that something’s fishy. He’ll be all over it.”

  “Why does he intimidate you so much? He’s only your boss.”

  “We’re closer than that,” Lock said. “He’s like my father.”

  “You started to explain that in one of our marathon phone calls, but then you changed the subject.”

  Lock intentionally hadn’t told her much about Abby. He felt uncomfortable bringing Abby—whom he saw as his spiritual mentor—into a relationship that might turn out to be ill-fated. But it was too late for Lock to be that circumspect.

  “I’m closer to Abby than I ever was to my own father. In his younger years, Abby was a drunk like my father, but after he quit, he changed. After I did some teaching in an elementary school in Philadelphia, I went to work for CPS. For some reason, he took me under his wing. He got me into AA and helped me quit drinking and getting high all the time. He made up for what I missed as a kid from my father. But all of this is a conversation for some other time. I need to think clearly and get some sleep.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, then,” she said, reaching for the door.

  “No. Don’t call. No more contact for now. Play it cool. Remember, small rooms.”

  She turned back from the door, pressed herself up against him, and hugged him hard.

  “You know how we nail almost everyone who tries to scam us?” he said. “It’s easy. It’s because they’re stupid. Even the smartest of them are stupid and overconfident, sloppy with facts, the plans, the details.”

  “But we’ll be careful,” she said.

  “Right,” he said. “And paranoid. Get paranoid. Real paranoid. Act as if there are a dozen investigators on you twenty-four hours a day. That way, we’ll make zero errors and take zero risks. When you take risks, it’s only a matter of time until you get caught. We’ll take no risks at all.”

  She kissed him goodbye and left.

  He watched her from his window.

  Lock moved closer to the fireplace, but it was no use. He couldn’t get warm.

  The truth was, there were no details to work out—it was just working up the nerve to go through with it. He knew exactly what he needed to do, and exactly how to pull it off. But he wasn’t going to worry about the rationalization he’d need for himself—that would come in time, not that there was much time. He knew if he got started in on the details of what to do and how to do it, the courage would come.

  His idea was ridiculously simple. Witt drinks too much. He drives. One night, he’d go out drinking. That would be his contribution to his own downfall. Lock would follow him and do the rest. And when Lock was finished with him, he’d want to settle with Natalie in about two minutes. The divorce would go through and that would be that. Justice would be served and no one, including Witt, would know different.

  13

  For Lock, the next day was a more or less normal day in the office. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, and that helped him stay outwardly calm as he made hurried, cryptic notes on a few sheets of lined paper, mapping out the details of his plan to help Natalie and the girls. When he was finished, he read them over to help commit them to memory, then took the pages to the office shredder and watched them turn into ribbons of trash.

  He couldn’t sit still. He walked to the water cooler three times. Anxiety coursed through his veins. For Lock, the excitement of planning the details of the scheme was like the intoxication of drinking—knowing he shouldn’t do something, but doing it anyway. Through sheer will, he quashed his second thoughts and self-doubt.

  Lock had a meeting with the Latino couple whose children had been living in the storage facility. He knew only a little Spanish, so he found a Spanish-speaking co-worker who helped him lecture the couple.

  The county had arranged temporary housing for the whole family. The children ran wild in a conference room nearby, loosely supervised by a staff social worker who sat with them and read a magazine. Lock could hear the kids’ peals of laughter from down the hall.

  He picked up a cardboard box from the floor of his cubicle and followed the sounds of the children to the conference room. He entered and they immediately recognized him. They stopped chasing each other at once and stood whispering to each other, staring at Lock.

  “Good morning,” he said, pulling up a chair. He turned it around to face the children and sat down. The cardboard box was filled with art supplies. “What are you guys doing? Who likes to draw?”

  The oldest child, the girl, lit up, her eyes wide. “We like to go to McDonald’s.”

  “No, not today,” Lock said.

  The girl turned tragically to her siblings and spoke a quick phrase in Spanish. Their faces fell. Lock opened the box and removed pads of paper and a large plastic pouch. The social worker put down her magazine and watched Lock and the children.

  He placed the items on the table and the kids clambered into the conference chairs, grabbing at the paper and reaching into the pouch, retrieving handfuls of crayons, markers, and colored pencils.

  “I’d like you kids to draw pretty pictures for your new apartment,” he said. “Your mama and papa might put them on the wall.” Lock noticed that the youngest, a girl of maybe three, was watching him instead of making something with the art supplies. He slid his chair to the table and took a sheet of paper and a marker for himself. He began drawing a simple Christmas tree with small outlines of ornaments. He held his Christmas tree out for the little girl to see.

  “Can you help me fill in the colors of the ornaments?” he said. The girl looked at the picture and back to Lock, then slipped off her chair and rounded the table to get to him. She looked at her big sister and said something in Spanish that Lock didn’t understand. Without taking her gaze off of her own drawing, the big sister said something to the littlest.

  Then the big sister addressed Lock, again, without looking up. “She wants to sit with you.”

  Lock motioned for the little one to come over and helped her up so she could sit in his lap.

  “What color do you want?” he asked. “We have every color. Here’s blue, here’s green, and here’s red. Pick one.” The little girl’s sister gave her some instruction and the little girl took a blue crayon and began to fill in the angel shape at the top of the tree.

  “That’s beautiful,” Lock said. “Muy bonita. You’re a great artist. Una artista magnifico.” He thought that was right. They continued drawing together, Lock guiding the child’s hand to the outlined shapes and helping her fill them in.

  Lock’s enjoyment of this interaction was muted by the little girl’s resemblance to what Hannah might have been like at three. She didn’t look exactly like Hannah, but Lock could imagine helping to teach Hannah how to draw, praising her efforts. He forced a small smile.

  This is what I want. A family. Children to nurture, a wife to love. Why has that been so impossible for me? Will it always be this tough? With Natalie, it seems in arm’s reach. The thought of a drink popped up, and just as quickly, Lock banished it.

  The door to the conference room opened and Abby stood there. He surveyed the room.

  “Lock,” Abby said, “sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak with you.”

  Lock lifted the little girl off of his lap and
sat her down on the chair. She was too small to reach the table comfortably. She wriggled around to get up on her knees.

  Lock walked past Abby and out into the hallway. Abby followed and Lock closed the conference room door behind them.

  Abby, a head shorter than Lock, squinted up. “How’s it going, boy? I see you haven’t submitted your assessment on that Red Cedar Woods case,” he said. “Why not? Is there a complication?”

  “I’m still thinking about it,” Lock said. “Both parents deny filing the report of neglect, and each accuses the other. I want to know who did it before I make a decision about keeping the case open.”

  “Well, if there’s nothing to it, don’t dawdle in closing it,” Abby said, adjusting his necktie. “We received three new reports overnight, and I need you to take at least one of them. You’re my best investigator and I need you on real cases, not out there helping damsels in distress.”

  “If anything, it’s the husband who’s in trouble—this mom is a real piranha. At least, that’s my impression after meeting her twice.” He hated describing Natalie that way, but he needed to put Abby off the scent.

  “Well, watch out, then,” Abby said. “When a piranha is hungry, it’ll eat anything, including its young.”

  “I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”

  Abby tried to straighten his tie again, without much success. Lock reached out and tightened the knot in Abby’s tie and centered it.

  “Terrific,” Abby grimaced. “Rich people burning up my limited resources and using us as entertainment so they can get the goods on each other for their divorce. There ought to be a law.”

  “Yes. The arrogance of the privileged, isn’t that what you say?”

  “So,” he said, “if there’s nothing to this Red Cedar Woods complaint, shelve it.”

  Lock had already decided the case would be closed, and soon. In a day or two, he’d tell Abby he thought the culprit might be the nanny, who’d filed the report because she couldn’t stand Mr. Mannheim and wanted to cause him trouble anonymously.

  As the day wore on, Lock began to feel better about his decision to proceed. He couldn’t leave it up to CPS, either. Too much paperwork, too many lawyers. Judges. Continuances. Half the time CPS couldn’t get John Wayne Gacy convicted, he thought. Lots of times, Lock would see a man lose a custody case, and he’d know he could have shown the poor sap how to win. Bend a rule here, fabricate a little there, big deal. It was all for the greater good, and, he admitted, for his own good. Didn’t he deserve a family? So many of the people he came into contact with through work didn’t. He was a good man. He would give Natalie and her kids a good life. Witt had to know he was being reckless when he drove drunk with kids in his car. All Lock would be doing was providing the consequences for his irresponsible behavior.

  That was exactly what Lock would do, and once closing the case was out of the way, he’d be free to move forward with the preparations for what he was going to do to Witt Mannheim. And after that, he’d be a step closer to having Natalie and the beginnings of a family of his own. Natalie already had the girls. Maybe they would have boys together. Two boys, he thought. That’s what he had always wanted. It would be a loving family of six. He couldn’t wait to get started.

  14

  Later that afternoon, Lock drove into Media and found a spot right in front of the café. Natalie, dressed in her yoga tights and top, was sitting there waiting for him.

  He bought a coffee for himself and a green tea for Natalie. They were in take-out cups. He joined her at a little round-top table in the rear.

  No kiss hello, no touching. He just sat down. She opened her eyes wide in expectation and smiled.

  He looked around and leaned in close to her. “Listen carefully. It’s going to happen Thursday night. A week from tomorrow. Where I told you, at the time I told you. At the curve. Eight fifty. Exactly. Got it?”

  Natalie spoke quietly. “A week from tomorrow. Eight fifty. And put my car in for service so I can get a loaner.”

  “Correct,” Lock said. “And zero contact between us. None.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said, “I can’t be without you for that long.” She burned her eyes into his.

  “I know,” he said, picking up his coffee. “I could have told you this over the phone, but I wanted to see you.”

  Under the table, she slipped one of her feet out of her sandal and pressed her toes into his leg, walking them up to his knee and then forward onto his thigh. He pursed his lips and grabbed her ankle, pushing it down toward the floor. She exhaled in mild disappointment.

  Her hand darted out and took his. He gave it a quick squeeze and let go.

  “I have to go,” he said, kissing her goodbye with his eyes.

  Lock’s mind was full of rushing thoughts as he walked to his car in the cold November air.

  But was he rationalizing? Did this plan break any of the twelve steps of AA? More like all of the steps. Was there any justification at all for violating his professional ethics, his personal code of conduct? Possibly. Probably. He admitted to himself that there was plenty he’d be getting out of all this. He knew that. He’d have Natalie. And he’d benefit from the money. He couldn’t pretend that wasn’t part of the equation. He would have done it anyway, but the thought of being able to live in the way she was used to, the thought of taking the kids on vacation—skiing, maybe Europe—that mattered, too. For much of his life, no one had wanted or needed him. That was about to change.

  Edwina was delightful—her seemingly infinite curiosity absolutely fascinated him, and her eager affection went straight to his heart. Dahlia brought Hannah to mind, a bittersweet memory. He was glad he had known Hannah, and crushed that he’d lost her. And both of Natalie’s kids were sponges, absorbing everything they experienced. Lock’s elementary school teaching days came to mind. Children loved to learn, and he loved to teach. What could be more perfect?

  On Friday night, Lock stayed in the carriage house and tended to two blue orchids he had bought at a Home Depot garden center. On each plant, one bud had bloomed—white—and each plant held numerous buds almost ready to burst open. He moved the pots back several inches from the cold panes of glass in the window overlooking the driveway. The window faced south, and the man at the garden center had told him orchids preferred that. He had also told Lock that the greatest myth about orchids was that they were hard to grow. Outside the window was one of his favorite trees. It was just a birch, nothing rare, and nothing on his list, but it was one of the first things he’d noticed after he had gotten sober. Going to AA had allowed him to appreciate what he had, and soon after his first few meetings he had noticed the birch—it had always been there, as if waiting for him to see it. The idea embarrassed him, but he often thought of it as his guardian angel, a sign of the new direction his life had taken.

  At Home Depot, Lock had asked question after question, wanting to get it right. Did the plant need to be repotted? What kind of soil was best? Should he buy one of those jars labeled “orchid food?”

  Finally, the man cut him off, saying, “The most challenging thing about raising these little fellows is understanding exactly how little water they need and how much they love to be ignored. Just get them as much sunlight as possible.”

  Lock bought the plants hoping to surprise—or was it to impress?—Natalie, though he expected she would howl that she would have gladly given him at least one of her prize specimens. She’d probably chastise him for buying dyed orchids. After spreading newspaper on his kitchen table and repotting the plants based on the printed instructions provided by Home Depot, and then putting them back on the windowsill, Lock sat in his living room with his checkbook in hand and flipped through a stack of bills. Unable to concentrate, he paid none of them.

  He opened his refrigerator and removed a stick of butter, three eggs, a small jar of dried parsley, and an onion—the ingredients he used to ma
ke omelets. As he assembled the items, a mild wave of nausea settled in his gut. Not enough for him to consider himself sick, but enough to put him off his appetite. He shook his head and returned everything to the refrigerator.

  The rest of the night, he sat in his living room and watched TV. He couldn’t describe a single event in any of the shows he’d watched. Then he went to bed and watched the ceiling for a few more hours. He didn’t get within a thousand miles of sleep.

  Earlier that afternoon at work, the fear had begun to set in. He was thoroughly distracted, scanning his to-do list for anything that urgently needed his attention. He knew the less critical tasks were going to have to wait. He couldn’t function. And after work, it was worse. He tried everything. He went to an AA meeting but didn’t hear a word. The heaviness in his gut wouldn’t quit. He went back home, where he found himself almost in a trance, picturing everything he was going to do. Getting the Ambien into Witt’s beer would be the toughest part. But he even had that figured out.

  On Saturday, after another mostly sleepless night, Lock bundled up against the fifteen-degree weather and took a long walk, past the pond and into the deep woods beyond. At first, he thought he was shivering from the cold. But it wasn’t the cold. It was him. It was the whole thing.

  Lock heard people approaching. A family of four, two kids and two adults, were trudging through the woods on the same overgrown path Lock was on. The kids had sticks and were busy running and whacking snow and icicles off tree branches while their parents held hands and tried to keep up.

  The family brushed by Lock, and the man nodded hello. Lock nodded back. The kids kicked snow at each other and tried to hide from their parents behind a stand of scraggly young chestnut trees.

  Lock walked on but soon looked back when he heard the shouts of the kids, who had given chase to a couple of squirrels. When the kids gave up, the squirrels began chasing each other wildly around a tree stump. It was a simple thing, something families everywhere experienced all the time, so often that they didn’t know how precious it was. It was what Lock wanted, and he knew he would do anything to have it.