by Matt Witten
The TV vans were gone, but there was a cop car parked in front of my house. Well, hell, I hadn't done anything wrong . . . had I? Fighting an impulse to turn my bike around and have lunch in town somewhere, or maybe get started on that trip to Mexico, I pedaled resolutely onward.
As I rode closer, I noticed the cop car was empty. A sudden thought hit me: What if there's some cop lying on the backseat in a pool of blood? Breaking into an instant sweat, I squealed my brakes. Why was all this shit happening to me? Now I really did turn my bike around and zoom off.
But then I turned my head for one last look and saw a cop: Manny Cole. He wasn't lying in a pool of blood, he was walking stealthily underneath my grape arbor. And he was looking all around, to make sure no one was watching him.
I veered my bike hard to the right, hiding myself behind the same bedraggled bushes that I'd thrown Zapper's knife into. Safe from Cole's sight, I studied him. He was sneaking off toward the backyard of 107. Why was he acting so furtive? And why did that jacket he was carrying under his arm look so familiar?
Because it was my jacket!
I got off the bike and stashed it in the bushes. Then I stashed myself in there too and waited.
A minute passed, maybe two. It felt like hours. From my hiding place I could see Cole's car, but not Cole himself. Was he in Zapper's backyard, or mine? And what the heck was he doing with my jacket?
I poked my head out from behind the junipers, then quickly poked it back in again. Cole was walking down my driveway toward his car.
But he wasn't acting furtive anymore, he was strutting proudly.
And he was minus my jacket.
After he drove away, I jumped out of the bushes, deposited my bike on the driveway, and ran to Zapper's backyard. The jacket wasn't there. I ran to my own backyard; still no jacket.
I didn't get it. Had Cole planted my jacket inside Zapper's apartment, to incriminate me? But that didn't make sense; no doubt the cops had already gone through the apartment for clues last night, after the murder.
But Cole had something up his sleeve, that was for sure, and I better have something up mine. Screw it, maybe I should just break into Zapper's apartment and find out what Cole had done. Had he stuffed my jacket behind the sofa or under the bed, so the other cops would believe they must have missed it when they went through the apartment the first time?
I was an old hand at breaking and entering; when I was busy solving that other murder, I did it three times. All I needed now was the hammer from my kitchen tool box, so I could smash open a window. Eager to get the B and E job done before any cops came back, I stepped quickly to my side porch, opened the screen door—
And right there, hanging on its customary hook, was my jacket.
How bizarre. Why did Cole take my jacket only to put it right back?
I picked it up. There didn't seem anything different about it. I checked my pockets and found the usual crumpled chocolate bar wrappers, nothing else. There were the customary faded areas on the elbows; some muddy spots here and there, most of which came from my trip to the cemetery; a couple of dark reddish stains near the right wrist, which must have come from . . .
From what?
Grape juice? No, not purple enough. I brought my nose close and sniffed. It smelled a little like iron, and something else I couldn't identify—
Oh, my God. I sniffed again. Horrified, I threw the jacket away from me to the ground.
It was dried blood.
Cole had rubbed some of Zapper's blood into my jacket! Some time soon—today, I'd bet—the cops would come roaring up to my house with a search warrant.
And I'd be stone busted.
Gut-wrenching panic took over my body. I grabbed the jacket from the ground, jumped into my old Toyota Camry, and backed up. I heard a thunk; it was my bike, getting crunched beneath my wheels. My trusty old Raleigh that had been with me for fifteen years, since before I had the money to buy a car.
But I had no time to mourn. In the rearview mirror I spied a cop car coming up Elm toward my house—and toward me. Was the big search about to begin? Would their warrant cover my car, too? Next to me, that incriminating bloody jacket was burning a hole in my car seat. I could just imagine Cole's evil grin as he picked up my jacket and pretended to spot the blood for the first time.
Slamming my foot on the accelerator, I tore off as fast as my antique Camry could carry me.
Behind me the cop car sped up, honking its horn. No, wait, not just one cop car—there were two of them.
Praying to the god of Japanese cars, I zigged right on Hyde Street and zagged left on West Circular, trying to shake the cops. But they closed in on me. Their sirens started screaming, and so did I. A recycling truck lumbered along ahead of me, forcing me to slow down. Damn. The cops raced toward me, lights flashing.
Only one thing to do. I sped around the truck—and came face to face with a television van bearing down on me from the other direction. I caught a quick glimpse of Max Muldoon's thick mustache and terrified face in the driver's seat as I swerved back to the right just in time, almost crashing into a parked minibus. I heard the agonized squealing of the TV van's brakes as we missed each other by inches. I raced on.
Behind me the sirens blared. But the cop cars were temporarily stuck. Muldoon, petrified by his near accident, had stopped his van cold in the middle of the street. That left the recycling truck and the cops immobilized behind the parked minibus. I turned left on Washington and put my pedal to the metal, feeling more like Bruce Willis than I ever expected to feel in this life.
But then the sound of the sirens changed, and I could tell the cops had broken free of their tormentors. If they turned right on Washington, I had a shot. If they turned left, I was one dead action hero.
I looked in the mirror. They turned left.
But I was a block ahead of them, and there were about four cars between us. Maybe if I slipped off of Washington Street right now, while they were still busy straightening their wheels, they wouldn't see me. No time to think about it; I swerved sharply into the Grand Hotel parking lot and raced to the other side of the building. Oh, shit—the exit on the other side was blocked! Because of the renovation work that had just begun, there were two huge Dumpsters barring my way.
If the cops had seen me, I was trapped. I ducked my head down under the wheel, as if that might somehow protect me from danger. The sirens screamed closer and closer, and a vision of those cages at the Saratoga City Jail came unbidden into my head.
But then the sirens screamed off down the road.
I got my Toyota in gear, backed up, and tore off down Washington in the opposite direction from the cops. I turned left on Broadway and realized too late that my route was taking me right past the police station. There were two more cop cars idling out front. I slowed way down to something approaching the speed limit, gritted my teeth . . . and drove past them without incident. Then I sped up and kept on going.
I needed to get rid of that goddamn jacket—fast.
Taking back roads, I drove out to Price Chopper, near the mall. I scrounged up four dollars in nickels and pennies from the ashtray, went into the store, and bought a pair of scissors. Then I went back to the car and hacked my jacket into three different pieces. I didn't want some lucky garbageman finding the jacket and wearing it, then learning from the local TV news that it was an important piece of evidence in a homicide case.
I threw two pieces of my jacket in the Price Chopper Dumpster. The third piece, a small section of sleeve containing the bogus bloodstains, I stuffed in an empty shoe box. I shoved the box deep into a garbage can outside The Perfect Fit, a clothing store next door to Price Chopper.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I got back in my car and started it up. Then I froze. What would I tell the cops when they asked me where my jacket was? I needed to buy a replica. It was a pretty standard denim jacket, from The Gap. But I was scared to go to The Gap in Saratoga Mall—what if the cops questioned The Gap salesmen?
So I went back into Price Cho
pper and got some money out of the cash machine. Then I drove half an hour north to Aviation Mall in Glens Falls. I left the radio off, afraid I might find out the cops had an all points bulletin out on me.
I fished a well-worn Adirondack Lumberjacks baseball cap out of the trunk and pulled it down low over my eyes, trying to look as commonplace and unmemorable as possible. Hopefully Pop's murder hadn't made such a big splash up in Glens Falls, and I wouldn't be recognized. Keeping my head down, I went into The Gap, picked out a denim jacket quickly before any salespeople came over to help me, and paid in cash.
Of course, I couldn't face the cops with a jacket that looked brand new. So on my way home I turned off of Route 9 onto a cornfield, got out of the car, and rolled the jacket around in the mud.
Now I was ready.
And so were the cops, as I discovered when I got home.
There were cop cars and TV vans galore out front. Before I could get into the house, I had to pass a gauntlet of TV cameras. I expected Muldoon to ask me why I'd raced around him before, but he didn't. I guess I'd driven by him too fast for him to see my face.
Inside my house, Cole and five other cops were having the time of their lives turning the place upside down. Andrea was begging them to take it easy, but they paid her no attention. They could barely contain their vicious delight as they threw our books, blankets, clothes, and the rest of our worldly possessions into big piles in the middle of all the rooms. Thank God Leonardo and Raphael were off at a friend's house.
The cops claimed they were looking for the gun I'd shot Zapper with. But I knew what they were really looking for—or at least, what Cole was really looking for. I wondered, did Lieutenant Foxwell, Young Crewcut, and the other cops who were ransacking my house know about Cole's evidence-planting scam?
When I walked into our upstairs bedroom, Cole and Young Crewcut were rummaging through Andrea's underwear drawer. I eyed them silently from the doorway. Then Cole turned, his large hands full of my wife's panties, and saw me.
His eyes immediately went to the denim jacket I was wearing. He dropped the underwear on the floor and got an excited gleam in his eyes, which he tried to hide by acting angry. "How come you ran away from us?" he growled.
"Ran away? What are you talking about?" I asked innocently.
"Talking about you hauling ass in your gray Toyota like some kind of wacko. I should bust you for reckless driving."
"Must have been some other gray Toyota."
"No way, you dumb fuck. I got your license plate."
I took a chance. "Oh, yeah? Then tell me, what is my license plate?"
His nostrils flared angrily. I'd caught him. But he recovered quickly. "What clothes were you wearing last night?"
"Why?"
"Because we got a warrant for your clothes, too."
I dropped my jaw and let my mouth hang open, doing my best imitation of a frightened fish. "M-m-my clothes?"
Cole gave a big sneering grin. "Yes. We'll start with your jacket."
"No! You can't have it!" I shouted in a panicky voice.
"We'll see about that." He advanced on me, with Young Crewcut at his side.
I let them back me up until I hit the bedroom wall. "All right!" I screamed. "I'll give it!"
With shaking hands, I took off my jacket and turned it over to Cole. He flashed me a triumphant look and began examining the jacket, trying not to be too obvious about knowing there were bloodstains near the wrist. So first he checked the neck, then the back, then he worked his way down the arm to the sleeve . . .
And suddenly his eyes filled with alarm. Where was the blood?!
Frantic, he turned the sleeve over. Still no blood! Then he tried the other sleeve, wildly turning it every which way. Nothing! Bewildered, he stared at me. I couldn't resist. I stuck out my tongue.
20
But it's a lot easier to stick out your tongue at a cop than it is to prove he committed two murders and is now trying to frame you for them.
Fortunately I didn't have a chance to sink into the slough of despond, because Leonardo and Raphael needed me to be strong for them. After the cops left, Andrea and I ran around cleaning up as much as we could before the boys came home from their friend's house. We didn't want them to know that the cops had torn our house apart.
When our Ninja Turtles did come home, and there were still huge piles of stuff everywhere, we told them we were just rearranging a few things. They believed us. It's amazing how gullible kids are.
So we tried to act normal during dinner and fake the kids into thinking everything was okay. But acting normal was hard. I kept getting visions of Cole sitting in his cop car, smoking his evil-smelling cigars and contemplating new ways to do me dirt.
Needing a break from all this sturm und drang, I decided to go to chess club. Aside from having sex and doing B and E's, playing chess is the one activity that gets me to totally immerse myself and forget all my cares.
The kids weren't enthusiastic about my leaving, but I took the sting away by practicing karate moves with them before I left. Andrea wasn't too enthused either, since it meant she'd have to finish cleaning up from the cops all by herself, but she eventually went along with it. I told her a little white lie about needing to meet Malcolm at the club, so we could consult on legal strategy.
As it turned out, though, Malcolm wasn't even there that night; he was playing in a chess league match down in Albany. So I spent the night playing with Dima, a Russian Jewish immigrant who must be at least a hundred years old but still kicks my ass routinely at chess. Not only is he one heck of a player, but he has a very distracting habit of picking his nose when he plays. He has the biggest nostrils I've ever seen. That night I tried a new defense against him, an aggressive variation of the Sicilian called the Accelerated Dragon, and he whupped me with ease. Maybe I should just stick with the Hedgehog.
Despite my ignominious loss, which was followed by two other even more ignominious losses, chess club was intensely relaxing, just like always. Even Hal Starette's presence didn't bother me; we just stayed at opposite ends of the room and ignored each other.
The great thing about chess club is, no one ever talks about anything besides chess. I'd been going there for years now, seeing the exact same men week after week and month after month; but I still knew basically nothing about them, like what their jobs were or how many kids they had or how much money they made. All I knew about them was which openings they preferred, and if they liked to castle queenside, and how they handled rook and pawn endgames.
I really believe that, in some strange way, this very lack of knowledge about the facts of each other's lives is what made us all feel so close to each other. Our relationships were totally existential.
Whenever I try to explain this to my wife, she just shakes her head and says it's further proof men are from Mars.
That night, even though all the men there undoubtedly knew I was a murder suspect, no one bothered me about it. The closest anyone came to even mentioning it was the moment I came in. A manic depressive guy in his twenties named Billy, who plays very well when his medicine is properly adjusted, looked up from his game and mumbled, "Good luck."
I nodded, then looked over at his board. "Queen-side majority. Tough endgame."
"Yeah," he said, moving a pawn, and that was that.
Okay, maybe we are sort of Martian.
I played Dima until midnight, then realized I was so tired the bishops were starting to look like pawns. So I bade everyone good-night and headed for the parking lot.
"Jacob," I heard someone call.
I turned. It was Hal; he'd followed me outside. Now I caught a quick sour whiff of him as he stepped toward me and said, "I've got something for you."
I blinked. "What?"
Hal registered my surprise. "Look, maybe you're guilty, maybe you're not. But I can't just show up at chess club with you every Tuesday night without telling you what I know. I play lousy when I'm distracted by stuff like that."
"Sorry," I s
aid.
He nodded. "So here it is. One chess player to another, right? You know Manny Cole?"
My skin prickled. "Sure as hell do."
"Okay. Sal, the bartender at the harness track, says Cole was in there Sunday night waving hundred-dollar bills around, making huge bets and buying drinks for everybody."
"How intriguing," I said, and it was. Further proof of Cole's newfound wealth since Pop's murder.
"Cole wasn't one of the cops who owned the Grand Hotel building," Hal went on, "so whatever he did, it had nothing to do with me."
Wait a minute. I looked at Hal's shirt. It was drenched with sweat.
Why was Hal busy implicating Manny Cole? Was he really just helping out a fellow chess player—or was he trying to divert my attention from something?
And what would that something be?
"Okay, Jacob, now I've told you everything. Take care," he said, and walked off toward his car.
I watched him go. His smell went with him. Had Hal killed Pop?
I shook my head, feeling dizzy. Dennis, Dave, Hal . . .
Next thing I knew, I'd be suspecting Max Muldoon. I better go home and get some serious shuteye.
By the time I got home it was already 12:30. There were no bothersome cop or media vehicles parked out front, and 107 was dark—Dave's house was dark too, I noted. So I looked forward to a quiet night of sleeping and letting my subconscious do its best to piece this whole thing together. I unlocked the side door, walked in—
And heard a noise in my study. Someone knocking against something. "Andrea?" I said.
No answer.
It must be Leonardo, I thought. The kid has a tendency to sleepwalk when under stress, and God knows he was under plenty of stress lately. "Hey, Leonardo," I said, turning the corner into the study.
It wasn't Leonardo.
Whoever he was, he was way too big to be Leonardo. He snarled at me, "Where's your fucking money?"
In the darkness, I couldn't make out his face. I could see his eyes, though, and unless it was my imagination they held a wild gleam. There was no question about the other gleam in the room; it belonged to a long curved knife the guy was waving at me. It looked exactly like Zapper's. Could this be Zapper's ghost?
