by Robert Pobi
“You scared the shit out of everyone last night. And I mean everyone.” Spencer stopped and his face grew serious, almost grave. “Even Hauser, and he’s a tough man to get to.”
“Has Hauser briefed you on a media plan?”
Spencer nodded. “He’ll be handling all releases. He called all the reporters on your list and three of them were already in the area on another story. You’ve gained a lot of trust from the department so far.”
“You here on any sort of a mission?”
Spencer waved it away. “I haven’t told Hauser I know you. Not yet. I wanted to be allowed to drop by and have a talk before I was prohibited from dropping by and having a talk.”
“I appreciate it. Especially after Scopes.”
Spencer’s tone dropped an octave. “Everybody’s heard about that, Jakey. Scopes is mean.”
“My kind of mean?”
Spencer looked at him and thought about the question. It was purely academic. They had met in second grade, after Spencer had transferred in from another school. Spencer, in an attempt to carry over his title as resident bully, decided he wanted alms from some of the smaller children. At recess, Spencer informed the eight-year-old Jake that he had to pay fifty cents a day for protection. Jake listened calmly as he stapled a project on leaves together, five or six sheets of construction paper adorned with oak, maple, and elm leaves. When Spencer was through talking, Jake looked up at him, smiled, then knocked his mouth into a bloody mess with two rapid slams of the heavy steel stapler. While Spencer was on the floor, teeth and blood leaking from his face, Jake leaned over and asked, “Protection from what?”
They had stayed best friends until Jake walked out nine years later.
“Nobody’s your kind of mean, Jakey.” He took another sip of his coffee. “Can I ask you why you didn’t let me know you were coming to town?”
It was an honest question—one Jake had expected. He thought about lying, about saying that he had been busy, that he had his hands full with his father’s affairs, that he hadn’t planned on staying around for long. But he had tried to give up lying when he had kicked the drugs and he had gotten pretty good at the truth. At least his version of it. “I spent a lot of time trying to forget this place. You remind me of what I had no intention of coming back to.”
The big cop in the civilian clothes took another sip of his coffee and nodded seriously. “Thanks for not bullshitting me.” He put the mug down. “So what are you going to share, Special Agent Jake Cole?”
“You first. How’s your father?”
Billy’s father, Tiny Spencer, had been a bike racer in the late sixties and early seventies, racing the American circuit for Suzuki. For eight years he traveled the country, chewing up racetracks with the likes of Halsy Knox and the rest of the death wishers. Then his almost record-breaking stint as a corporate rider ended on an August afternoon in Bakersfield, California. The crash tore both legs off at the knee and Tiny’s racing days were over. So Tiny had bought a place in Montauk, because he hated Texas where he was from, and began building custom racing canopies in his garage. Within six months he was making more money than he had as a circuit racer. Jake recalled that the house had always smelled of fiberglass and solvent.
Spencer walked down into the living room and stared out at the ocean and Jake remembered how everybody who came here was always drawn to the same thing—the big line of the Atlantic that didn’t stop until it hit Portugal. “Dad died five years ago. Prostate cancer. He said it was from his ass sitting on wheels all those years. First bikes, then the chair.” Spencer’s shoulders slumped when he saw the weed-covered pool, lily pads and lush algae, a deep green against the perfect blue of the ocean beyond. “I remember when this place was like a TV show. Your mom wiggling around the place in Chanel, getting us sandwiches with the crusts cut off and letting us stay up late on Creature Feature Night. Mallomars and Pop-Tarts. And your dog, Lewis.” He paused, and the silence said he regretted bringing it up. “Remember those days?”
Spencer’s gaze shifted to the algae-lush surface of the pool, a monument to the past. “I remember that pool. Jesus, where did it go?” Of all of Jake’s friends, only Spencer had permission to use the pool owing to that Pablo Picasso had decorated the bottom with a large winking cubist vagina. Spencer had been appreciative of the painting until he had seen his first vagina in real life; he had been perplexed at—and grateful for—its lack of ninety-degree angles.
Jake shrugged. There was no conceivable way to answer the question—rhetorical or not—without opening things he wanted to stay closed. Things like his dog.
Spencer took another sip of coffee to fill the dead zone in the conversation, then said, in a documentary filmmaker’s voice, “How did Billy Spencer become Officer William Spencer? would be the next question. Hauser saved me. And I don’t want any jokes. I am not a born-again anything, Jake. After you left I tried to keep things the same. Kept shucking oysters for the yacht club, chasing the summer girls. You know, the same old same old. But that only worked for so long. So I floated. For a decade. But you know how time has that funny little way of catching up with you? Yeah, well, one night I’m driving home from work and I’m hammered. Hauser pulls me over and has me get out of the truck. I can’t even stand. He can arrest me. Have my truck towed. You know what he does? He gets in my Ford and parks it in a field off the road. Then he drives me home. It was one of those light-bulb moments you hear about; I realized that not everyone in this line of work is out to get people. Some of them—guys like Hauser, I mean—just want to make the place a little better. So a week later I wrote the police exam and did pretty good, well enough that they contacted me to see if I needed any encouraging to go to the interviews. After the interviews they went at me with a background check, psychological profile, polygraph test. I did the twenty-eight-week program, and Hauser hired me right out of the gate. Now here we are.” A lifetime summed up in a few sentences.
They stopped speaking for a few minutes, both listening to the sound of the ocean. Jake finally asked, “What can you tell me about Hauser?” He pulled out a cigarette, brought it to life.
“Born here, played ball for Southampton High. Football scholarship to the University of Texas. First string quarterback for three seasons. Went pro. Number six draft choice for his year in the NFL. Played four solid games for the Steelers before he had his right knee bent ninety degrees against design. You’d probably like him if you got to know him. He’s a capable guy, it takes a lot for him to go green like last night.”
“Last night would be tough on anyone.”
Spencer mulled the statement around for a few seconds, then held out his mug for a refill. “You seemed to be fine with it.”
Jake heard it coming out in his voice. The worry. “It’s what I do.”
Spencer nodded like that had answered it all, but his face was still playing around with a few questions. “History? Wife? That kind of stuff,” he said, changing the subject.
What could Jake say to that? Heroin, a cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator sewn into my chest, drinking problem. NA, AA. Somehow got through it. Met Kay. Makes me laugh, makes me horny. A boy, Jeremy. “Her name’s Kay.” I figure out the event cascade at a crime scene faster than a team of battlefield anthropologists. “I’ve been with the bureau for twelve years now.” Half of them clean. “A son, Jeremy.” Who I call Moriarty because he thinks it’s a cool name and I am terrified he will someday find out that I don’t know if I am a good man. “Live in New York. Kay plays with the orchestra—cellist.” I am on the road eleven months a year. “I’m back because my father set himself on fire and smashed through the front window.” And pissed off that the bastard didn’t have the courtesy to die.
“I wish you would have said good-bye. Or sent a letter. Something. Anything. I went into the city to find you a couple of times.”
Jake stared at Spencer, wondering if he was supposed to say something here because Spencer had paused, like he wanted some sort of dial
ogue. Jake rinsed his mug under the faucet and placed it in the rack beside the sink. A few drops of water beaded on its surface.
“Everyone figured you’d come back some day. And here you are. More than half a lifetime later.”
Jake shrugged, as if that was some sort of an answer. He hoped Spencer would let it go.
“What’d you do when you got to New York?” Spencer pushed.
Jake remembered his visit to David Finch—his father’s art dealer. Jake had asked for thirty-one dollars, so he’d be able to stay at the YMCA while he found a job, got on his feet. He promised to pay it back when he could. Finch had said no. That Jacob wouldn’t approve. That he was sorry. And then he had closed the door in Jake’s face.
Two nights of no meals and no place safe to sleep later, Jake had sold a little piece of himself—the first of many. And learned, with an odd mix of horror and pride, that he was a survivor. The next part of his life had faded and been forgotten. The drugs helped. For a very long time they had helped. “Got on with my life.”
Jake’s eyes left Spencer and slid down to the safari pool out on the deck. In a way there was something serene, almost meditative about it. Maybe it wasn’t a sign of neglect after all. Maybe his father had been going Zen.
“What, exactly, do you do, Jake?”
“I paint the dead.” He looked back to the pond/pool.
“Another great American artist,” Spencer said, and poured his coffee down the drain.
8
His father’s jaw hung slack, cheeks dented in as if an invisible hand squeezed his face. Charred gray stubble flecked his skin and white specks of mucus hung at the corners of his closed eyes and open mouth. The left side of his face was a black-red mess of scab and antibiotic ointment bisected by a long sutured scar that ran from eyebrow to chin. His hands were bandaged knobs at the ends of his wrists, bloody gauze clubs. He snored loudly, the tremor of his voice shaking the air in the room. Even in medicated sleep the man commanded attention.
The room was full of flowers of every conceivable color, hue, and proportion. It smelled like a jungle, and Jake wondered what his old man would say about the composition.
The pneumatic door closer hissed softly and Jake turned to see a nurse in hospital blues come in. She was small, compact, and there was something familiar about her. “Has anyone asked you about the mail?”
Jake’s eyes swept back to his father, then to her brown stare, then down to her name tag. Rachael, it read. He would have much preferred a last name to go with the woman. “Mail?” was all he said.
She nodded. “The mail department called up and asked the station what they should do.”
Jake looked at her, wondering what the hell she was talking about. “About what?” he asked.
“About your father’s mail. It’s piling up.”
Jake sighed, tightened up his chest to process oxygen a little more efficiently, then shrugged. “Just put it in his nightstand. I’ll take care of it.”
The nurse stared at him for a few seconds, then her head began to shake side to side. She raised an eyebrow. “There’s an awful lot, Mr. Coleridge.”
“Cole. My name is Cole.”
She paused for a second, as if her hard drive had crashed. “Um, there’s nine sacks of mail for your father downstairs. I suspect that a lot more is coming. There will be more flowers, too.”
Jake’s brain was still hung up on trying to figure out what was so familiar about her. “Nine sacks?” he asked, jerking a thumb at his father. “For him?”
“Apparently so, yes.”
Jake let out a sigh that he followed with a loose shrug. It was hard to forget that his father was famous but he had somehow managed it. But the world of the triple W would no doubt be abuzz with news of his father’s accident. “Any suggestions?”
“Peter Beard stayed overnight once. His people took care of everything. We’re not equipped to handle this much mail.”
Jake smiled. “I don’t have any people.” Or a desire to be here, he wanted to add. “I’ll get someone to come collect it.” His father’s snoring hitched with an interrupted breath, then stopped. “Do you have a pediatrics ward?” he asked.
Nurse Rachael nodded. “Of course, second floor. Why?”
“Take all of my father’s flowers to pediatrics. Hand them out to the children. Throw the cards out.”
The nurse nodded slowly as she tried to find something wrong in his directives. When she couldn’t find a loophole, she smiled. “That’s a wonderful idea.” Suddenly, Jake realized what was so familiar about her.
Jake turned back to his father. “Has he been awake at all?”
Nurse Rachael nodded. “He was up last night, at the beginning of my shift.” As if to accentuate the point, she suppressed a yawn with the back of her hand. “He was in pretty good spirits.”
“Him?” he asked, not meaning to sound so surprised. Jake could not remember his father ever being in good spirits. The light etched his face with deep shadow, hollowed out his cheeks. He looked dead. Then the snoring started back up and the illusion was broken. “Did he say anything?”
“We talked a little. He asked for a drink and I got him a glass of water. When he took a sip he asked, ‘What the hell is this piss?’ Apparently he was hoping for scotch.” She smiled. “He seems to like me. He gets agitated around the other nurses. But a little of his fear seems to leave when I’m here. He keeps telling me that I look like Mia.”
Jake’s vital signs fluttered and he felt a little more of the old fear come back. So his father had noticed it, too. “You do.” He took in a breath and thought back to the days when you could smoke in a hospital room. Glory Days, Springsteen had called them. “Mia was my mother. My father hasn’t spoken her name in thirty-three years.”
Nurse Rachael—look-alike—nodded knowingly. “Divorce?”
Jake thought back to the last time he had seen his mother. It had been after a gallery opening in the city when he was twelve. She drove home by herself, leaving Jacob to his sycophants, his critics, and his booze. She sat down on the corner of the bed and he woke in a fog. Her hair was tussled from the open convertible and she was wearing a black cocktail dress and a pearl necklace. She smelled faintly of perfume and salt air.
She had leaned over and kissed him. Told him she loved him. That she was going back out for cigarettes. And a bag of Mallomars. They’d go down to the beach and watch the sun come up from the sleeping bag. She rubbed his back, then went out for smokes and cookies.
She never came back.
“No,” he shook his head, and the loose image of that night fell apart. “My mother was murdered.”
9
June 1978
Sumter Point
Jake was deep in the heat stage of REM sleep when she put her hand on his back, and his skin felt like a smooth sun-baked stone. She rubbed gently, feeling bones under the skin. Eventually he woke, rolled over.
She just watched him, waiting to see if he would make the rare transition from sleeping child to awake child; most of the time he would just smile at her, close his eyes, and drift off into wherever it was that he went when he slept.
“What time is it?” Jake stretched and his pajama shirt climbed up, exposing ribs and tummy.
She looked at her watch. “Four thirteen.”
“Dad come back with you?”
His mother’s face, a beautiful mixture of gentle shadows, smiled. “The show went well and he wanted to stay and talk. I wanted to come back to see you.”
“You should have stayed,” Jake said through a gaping yawn. “Did you have a nice hotel room? The kind with free soap?”
She smiled, rubbed his leg. “Yeah, the kind with free soap.” She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, something he was not yet embarrassed about—at least not in private. She had driven the coastal highway with the top down and she smelled of perfume and salt, that humid ocean smell that gets into everything by the water. “What did you do tonight, Jakey? Anything fun?”
>
“It was all right. Billy came over. We watched the Creature Feature. Battle of the Gargantuas was on but we didn’t have any Mallomars. Billy decided that he wanted to sleep at home.”
She ran her hand along his leg and kissed him again. “I have to run back to the Kwik Mart to get some cigarettes. I’m pretty sure they have Mallomars, too. You want me to get you some?”
It was the kind of thing his mother always did for him and he had to constantly resist the urge to abuse her kindness. Even at the age of twelve he could see that his dad did that enough for the both of them. “I’m okay, Mom.”
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. If you want, we can go down to the beach and watch the sun come up. I’ll put some coffee in Dad’s old army Thermos and we’ll cuddle up under a blanket and pretend that we’re the last two people on the planet and apes have taken over.”
“Cool.”
She smiled, stood up. “See? I’m not so bad for an old lady.” She was thirty-seven.
She leaned down and kissed him again and he couldn’t smell cigarettes on her and he knew that she was going to go to the store whether he asked her to or not. “Get a big bag,” he said.
“You got it.”
They found her car a mile from the Kwik Mart, pulled into the driveway of an empty summer rental.
There was no blood—no signs of a struggle—just her Pagoda sitting on the gravel with over half a tank of gas in it. A fresh pack of Marlboros sat on the middle console, a single cigarette missing from the pack. The bag of Mallomars and her purse were on the passenger’s seat. Two cookies were gone but the $25,000 in cash from the gallery show was still in her purse. Nothing missing but those two cookies and a single cigarette.
What was left of Mia Coleridge lay on a red patch of gravel 200 yards away.
10
Jake sat in a vinyl and aluminum chair jammed in between the sink and the window, staring at—but not seeing—his father. His mind was walking through the rooms at the Farmers’ house up the highway. He was in one of the guest rooms—an empty guest room—looking at the floor. He squatted down on his haunches and focused on something on the threshold. He had only seen it glimmer for a second, then he was past it, and it had become invisible. He leaned forward and the nearly straight line of a long strand of yellow hair, almost white, jumped off the topography of the wood grain.
