2 Grand Delusion

by Matt Witten

  Yes, they train them well at Wal-Mart.

  The camera and accessories came to $350, which I paid for with a credit card, feeling wistful. Our $300,000 nest egg had dwindled down to about negative $800. If things kept up like this much longer, I'd have to find an actual job.

  What a horrid thought.

  Of course, if I went to jail my job worries would be over. Permanently.

  On my way home I decided to stop at Judy Demarest's house, a restored Victorian a couple of blocks off Broadway—on the East Side. When I drove up, she was outside picking up The New York Times and her own paper, the Daily Saratogian, from her front steps. Her eyes narrowed as she watched me get out of my car.

  "Hey, Jude," I said, hoping a little Beatles reference would get us off to a friendly start.

  But she just nodded noncommittally. I came straight to the point. "Judy, I've been meaning to ask you something. All the TV stations said I confessed, but you never put that in the Saratogian. How come?"

  Judy shrugged. "The chief said you confessed, but I didn't want to publish it until I got your side of the story."

  "So why didn't you just call me up and get my side?"

  She silently looked down at her fingers, so I answered for her. "Because you were afraid I'd tell you it was true."

  "Hey, what did you expect me to think?" she said defensively. "I saw you fighting Pop that night, you scared the hell out of me. You were like the Wild Man from Borneo."

  I nodded, and tossed her a smile. "Well, now we're even."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Last time around, I wrongly suspected you of murder. This time you wrongly suspect me."

  She nailed me with a look. "Wrongly?"

  For some reason I couldn't help laughing. "Jacob, this isn't funny," she said.

  "I know. Look, can I come inside for a minute?"

  A little more reluctantly than I would have liked, she opened the door for me to come in. After I got settled at her kitchen table, I asked her to tell me everything she knew about the murder. As editor of the town newspaper, I figured she must have heard some good gossip.

  And she had. Unfortunately, all the gossip pointed to me as the killer. There was even a story making the rounds that the cops had found some skin with my DNA under Pop's fingernails.

  Come to think of it, the way he'd pinched me, that story might turn out to be true. Yet another crooked nail in my legal coffin.

  "What about Pop?" I asked. "You hear anything interesting about Pop?"

  "Just that he picked the wrong time to die. He was about to make a shitload of money off of selling the Grand Hotel to the SERC."

  What? "Pop was one of the owners?"

  "You bet. Majority owner."

  Interesting. Dave hadn't mentioned that; I guess he didn't know it. The Grand Hotel building, even foreclosed and in disrepair, must have cost Pop and his partners serious dough—a couple hundred grand, at least. Where had Pop gotten all that green stuff? Not from his cop salary, that's for sure. Apparently his bribery scams had done him proud.

  "Judy, thanks for the info," I said, getting up to go. "And listen, please don't tell Andrea I came by asking questions. I'm kind of handling this on my own."

  "I hope you know what the hell you're doing."

  "I don't. As usual. But if I ever figure it out, you'll get an exclusive. And if I ever really do confess," I added, "you'll be the first to know."

  Judy gave me another piercing look, probably still trying to figure out if I was guilty. I gave her a lighthearted thumbs up and walked out.

  Then I drove back home to the bosom of my family. But there was a TV van parked out front, lying in wait for me. I was glad I'd stashed my Wal-Mart purchase in the trunk under an old towel. I didn't want any eager beaver media people asking me why I'd bought a new video camera.

  When I pulled into my driveway, Max Muldoon jumped out of the van along with a five-foot-tall camerawoman. Camera rolling, they blocked my way. He shoved a microphone in my face and asked, "Mr. Burns, where were you this morning? Meeting with your lawyer?"

  I started past them, but Muldoon and his sidekick stuck with me step for step, crowding me away from my house. "It looks like an open and shut case, Mr. Burns. Why don't you give us your side of the story?"

  I stopped. If I weren't afraid of "poisoning the jury pool," I'd have jammed that microphone down his throat. "Actually, I do have a comment I'd like to make."

  Muldoon's eyes glinted, and his well-waxed mustache positively gleamed in the cold morning sunshine. I could almost hear what he was thinking: "MSNBC, here I come." But what he said out loud was, "Yes, Mr. Burns?"

  I waited to make sure the camerawoman had a good shot of me. Then I cleared my throat and declared, "I would like to say to the people of Saratoga Springs, Albany, and surrounding areas ... I honestly believe that Geraldo Rivera's facial hair looks good on him, but on this guy here, don't you think it looks kind of goofy?"

  Muldoon just stood there looking stricken. His sidekick started giggling. I took the opportunity to stroll away from them toward my house.

  But before I went in, I took a quick gander at the Venetian blinds that covered Zapper's tiny side window. Just as I'd remembered, the slats were uneven, leaving plenty of empty spaces to look through. Perfect for tonight's blackmail scheme, I was telling myself, when suddenly the door banged open, my kids poured out, and I was greeted by hugs, kisses, and the alarming smell of pancakes. Alarming, because there was no way I could possibly eat another bite after that epic pig-out at the Spa City Diner.

  Or so I thought. I guess two days of jailhouse food had left me feeling pretty ravenous, because I attacked my family's pancakes like they'd been cooked by Julia Child herself. Babe Ruth and Wayne Gretzky had been excellent pancake makers; it was good to see that Leonardo and Raphael were, too.

  Andrea and I decided that with all the stress the kids had been going through lately, it might be soothing to them if we carried on with our lives as normally as possible. So following through on some plans we'd made last month, we went out after breakfast for the Fifth Annual West Side Make-a-Difference Day. My favorite TV reporter was gone, hopefully to a barbershop to get those facial hairs clipped.

  The Make-a-Difference Day was a program sponsored by S.O.S. (who else?), where young, able-bodied West Siders would help their elderly or disabled neighbors with leaf raking and other fall chores. We had signed our family up to work for an old man named Joe McGillicuddy who lived on Cherry Street. Joe was blind, which turned out to be a big break. He didn't recognize me from the TV news, so he didn't ask me any tough questions. Instead we talked about grapes. He pruned his arbor himself every spring, totally by feel. "It's not so hard," he told me. "Close your eyes. I'll show you how."

  We stood under the arbor and I closed my eyes. With his own calloused hands, he moved my hands from one branch to another so I could feel their different textures. He showed me how to tell the dead old branches from the new ones by their roughness.

  "You must go slow," he said softly, "very slow." So I let my unseeing hands take their time, as I breathed in the smell of the sweet grapes and listened to the old man's calming voice.

  It took us all morning and most of the afternoon to rake Joe's leaves, clean his gutters, and do a lot of et cetera stuff, but I didn't mind. By the time we left there, I felt like a new man.

  Best of all, Joe took the kids inside for lunch while Andrea and I spent a whole hour digging in the dirt together, planting bulbs and chatting about things that had nothing to do with Pop's murder. She told me about all the obscure mail-order bulbs she was planning to plant in our own garden, and somehow we got into singing all the songs we knew that had the word "rose" in the title. One thing led to another, and we started laughing and groping each other behind the hedges. It definitely was a good thing Joe was blind.

  Heading home, Andrea and I held hands while the kids skipped along in front of us, making sure to avoid stepping on any cracks. We took a roundabout route t
hrough the West Side. The afternoon sun was slanting down and the autumn leaves were glowing. Our West Side neighbors were out in force helping each other put down storm windows, spread winter fertilizer on their lawns, and touch up their paint jobs.

  This was what the West Side was all about. Good people. I couldn't let one crooked cop and two lousy crack dealers ruin my affection for the whole neighborhood.

  A lot of the West Siders recognized me as we walked by, and I got some startled looks and stares. But no one made any nasty comments that would have made my family uncomfortable. And when I waved, they waved back pleasantly enough, then went back to their work.

  We passed a group of young mothers and toddlers cleaning up the litter on Pine Street. Then we saw three purple-haired teenagers raking leaves for a white-haired old lady who was bringing them cookies and milk. Even in the West Side's more downtrodden areas, folks were out mending broken fences and pulling weeds from sidewalk cracks.

  Andrea and I were so inspired by all this that when we walked past the Orian Cillarnian Hall, we dropped in to tell Lia Kalmus how much we appreciated her organizing this day. We could see her through the window talking to two junior high school girls with rakes, no doubt giving them their next assignments.

  Lia looked up when we came in, and her scarred face immediately assumed the same startled expression I'd seen on many of the other West Siders. I determinedly ignored it. "Hi, Lia," I said with an upbeat, oblivious smile. "I just wanted to thank you. I think it's totally great what you're doing here."

  "It really brings the community together," Andrea put in.

  "I raked three billion infinity leaves!" Raphael announced.

  "And I found four pennies and two nickels! That's fourteen cents!" Leonardo crowed.

  By now Lia had recovered her equanimity. "Wow, that's a lot of leaves and a lot of money," she said.

  Raphael wrinkled his nose. "What's that thing on your face?" he asked, pointing at Lia's disfiguring scar.

  Thanks, Raphael. I stuttered with embarrassment, and the two junior high schoolers slipped out the door to avoid the awkward scene. Meanwhile Andrea was shushing Raphael, but Lia put a comforting hand on Andrea's shoulder. "It's okay, honey," Lia told her.

  Then she turned to Raphael. "This is a burn mark. I was in a fire once when I was a young child. It hurt for a long time, but now it's okay."

  "Were you playing with matches?" Leonardo asked. His first grade class was in the middle of a unit on fire safety.

  I stuttered some more, and Andrea did her shushing thing, but once again Lia stayed composed. "I used to live in a country called Estonia," she explained gently to Leonardo, "where sometimes the government would set fire to your house if they were mad at you. That's why we're lucky to live in America, where things like that don't happen."

  Then Lia straightened up and picked up her cell phone. "Well, I better check with the Open Space people and see how the bike path cleanup is going."

  I was still feeling bad about my sons' rudeness, so I tried to fix it by showering more compliments on her. "Lia, I have to tell you." She paused in mid-dial. "I thought that speech you made at the Grand Hotel meeting was the most beautiful expression of the need for morality in politics that I have ever heard. Listening to you made me feel good again about being an American."

  Maybe my language was too flowery, because Lia eyed me suspiciously, like I must be putting her on somehow. "Well, thank you," she said cautiously.

  "I have to admit," I babbled on, talking too much because I was nervous, "I expected you to vote the other way on that issue. Just goes to show, you can never prejudge people."

  She nodded uncomfortably. The boys had dragged Andrea away to show her a video game in the hallway. Now that I was alone with Lia, I got an idea. Judy Demarest hadn't been able to give me much useful information, but she was an East Sider, whereas Lia was hooked into a whole different pipeline. "Lia," I began, "maybe you could help me."

  She lifted the phone again. "I'm kind of busy right now—"

  "I'm sure you know about my legal troubles."

  She waited, holding the telephone like a shield.

  "Listen, you know everyone on the whole West Side. And I'll bet people tell you things they'd never tell the cops. You think you could ask around and see if anyone heard something that night, or since then? About the murder?"

  Lia gave me a strange look. I couldn't tell what it signified; her droopy, bloodshot eye threw me off. But there seemed to be some kind of . . . fear?

  But why would she be afraid?

  Did Lia know something about the murder? Something she was scared I might find out?

  I forced myself to look directly into her disfigured face. Then it hit me: That's not fear I'm looking at, but horror.

  Like everyone else in Saratoga who watched the TV news, Lia must be certain that I'm a coldblooded killer—and here I am asking her for help.

  She must feel the same way I'd feel if O.J. Simpson came knocking on my door. I blushed hotly. Even though I hadn't killed anyone, I was embarrassed. What right did I have to impose on this good woman's trust? Mumbling "I'm sorry," I left the Orian Cillarnian with my tail between my legs, not even saying good-bye.

  13

  The rest of the day passed excruciatingly slowly, but finally it was night time. Show time for Tony and me. The moon was full, the stars were doing their thing, and we were about to do ours.

  By God, we were going to make Zapper talk.

  I was sure of one thing: Zapper knew a lot more about Pop's murder than he'd told me yesterday. If he wasn't the killer himself, then he knew who was.

  I mean, when you're in a high-risk profession like drug dealing, and you hear screaming and shooting in your backyard, you don't waste any time before you peek out through your Venetian blinds to see if someone's about to bust into your house and shoot you.

  Now if Tony and I could just work this hustle the way we wanted it . . .

  Tony had snuck out of Dennis's house after midnight, and I snuck out of Andrea's arms at about the same time. Now we were huddled behind the yew bushes in my backyard, spying on 107 Elm and waiting for the local drug traffic to die down. It took a while, because even though it was a Sunday night, a steady parade of happy-go-lucky partiers was knocking on Zapper's back door. Zapper's and not Dale's, since it was October 4, an even number.

  It's a good thing Tony and I had each other around to keep us awake, because we both kept nodding off. We'd only gotten maybe four hours of sleep the night before. Finally, around three a.m., a full half hour had passed by with no drug purchasers. We made our move.

  I gave Tony five bucks to buy drugs with. I did one final check of my video camera, and Tony did one final check of the old microcassette recorder I'd given him. Then he turned the recorder on, put it in his pants pocket, and walked up to Zapper's back door. I went up to Zapper's side window and placed my camera against it, in the spot where the Venetian blinds were most twisted and easiest to see through.

  Hopefully no late-night partiers would happen along right now, because they'd practically bump into me on their way to Zapper's back door. If they spotted me videotaping drug buys, that old happy-go-lucky spirit could disappear in a hurry. And if Zapper found the microcassette recorder in Tony's front pocket, well, I didn't even want to think about it. I tried to tell myself the recorder had been Tony's idea, not mine, but it didn't make me feel any better. I was putting the little guy in serious danger.

  Through my camera lens, I saw Zapper lying down on a sagging brown sofa, watching The Three Stooges on TV. Curly was clobbering Moe on the head with a frozen fish. Meanwhile Zapper had his hand down his pants, either scratching himself or masturbating, I couldn't tell which.

  Tony knocked on the back door. Zapper yawned and got up. As he took his hand out of his pants, his loose-fitting black T-shirt lifted up slightly. A big black knife handle stuck out of a holster on his hips.

  This one looked even scarier than the hunting knife he'd pulled on me
earlier. The guy must have a fetish for knives. I had an urge to yell to Tony to run away. But before I had a chance, Zapper opened the door, Tony came in, and Zapper closed it again.

  Now everything happened fast. They spoke for only ten seconds, maybe less, before Tony handed him the fiver. Zapper stuffed it in his pocket, threw on his coat, and went out the back door. I knew he was going straight over to Dale's apartment to retrieve the crack, so I didn't worry about him coming around my side of the house and spotting me. Meanwhile Tony sat down on the sofa and watched The Three Stooges.

  Some of this drug deal was hidden by the blinds, but I was getting most of it on tape. Any moment now, I'd capture Zapper coming back inside and handing a vial of crack to a nine-year-old boy. Coupled with the audio from the microcassette recorder, I'd have Zapper right where I wanted him. Either he spilled the beans about the murder to me, or I'd spill the beans about the drug deal to the D.A.

  Of course, if Zapper had done the killing himself, then getting him to talk would be tougher. But even so, if I pushed him hard enough I was confident I'd trip him up. This wasn't a rocket scientist I was dealing with here.

  Yes sir, I congratulated myself, this nifty hustle was going smoother than a Hollywood movie—

  But then a cop car drove up. It stopped right outside my house.

  Shit, go away already! But the car idled there, less than fifty feet away. Then the driver cut the engine, opened the door, and got out.

  In the light from the street lamp, I saw a familiar busted proboscis pointing toward the sky. It belonged to Manny Cole. He was looking up at my bedroom window. If he happened to turn and glance in my direction, he'd see me.

  Oh, God. Did taping a witness's drug deals count as intimidating him? Cole shut his car door and started for the sidewalk. His face was still turned to my window, but he was coming closer to me . . . closer . . .

  Three yards away from me there was a juniper bush that would hide me from Cole's sight. Should I make a quick dash for it? But maybe the sudden movement would make him look over and see me—