Deceived

by James Scott Bell

  “Good thing he came along when he did,” Moss said.

  “Yes, it was,” Liz said.

  “Now you were saying that as you were falling, you grabbed your husband’s shirt?” Moss had a little notebook to jot things down in.

  “That’s right,” Liz said. She didn’t need to try to sound tired. She was. But she gave it an extra sigh anyway. She wanted to get home, be alone, regroup. Think things through. She had plans to make.

  “And what, you went backward and your husband went over you?”

  “Something like that.”

  Moss scribbled. “If you can just tell me, to the best of your recollection, how he fell.”

  “Why is this necessary?” Liz said. “He fell and died. Isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s just so I can give a full report,” Moss said.

  “Can we finish this right now and be done with it?”

  “Would you rather do this at your house?”

  Liz shook her head. “Here is all I remember. I grabbed Arty by the shirt as he was reaching out for me. Then I felt myself go backward. Arty went right over me. Then I remember falling. And I hit my head, and I think I blacked out for a minute.”

  Moss nodded, wrote.

  “When I came to, I saw Arty there, and he wasn’t moving. I guess I knew he was dead, but I didn’t want to give up. So I got back up the hill and started for the entrance.”

  Moss stopped. “You didn’t have a cell phone with you?”

  Cell phone. She’d forgotten all about it.

  “No, no . . .” Liz said. “Please, can I go home now?”

  “You left your cell phone at home, or in the car?”

  Liz rubbed the sides of her head. “I don’t remember. We just didn’t have it. We were hiking.”

  “Of course.”

  “I want to go now.”

  “Yes,” Moss said. “There really shouldn’t be any need for you to relive this further. I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Towne.”

  The detective patted Liz’s arm. Liz forced a smile and nodded. She walked slowly to her car. She felt like Moss was watching her as she did. Two eyes boring into her back. Or was it just the feeling that something was behind her? Trouble, gaining.

  Keep moving.

  7:38 p.m.

  El Toro was a great little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place in Chats-worth. Mac had many a meal here with Arty. It was the most honest Mexican food in the valley, they agreed. Maybe the city, which was saying something.

  He and Rocky got a table near the window looking out at Topanga Canyon Boulevard. That was another honest thing about the place. No pretenses on the view. You came for the food and watched the cars go by.

  A waitress asked if they wanted something to drink, and Rocky looked at Mac as if asking permission.

  “Have whatever you want,” he said.

  “I’ll have a Corona and a shot of Cuervo,” Rocky said.

  Mac ordered a Coke.

  The place was about three-quarters full. Traditional Mexican music played in the background, and the smell of hot tortilla chips mingled with the thick scent of steaming carnitas sizzling on a serving pan at the table next to them.

  It was a smell Mac associated with friendship. He could see the family resemblance in Rocky. She had Arty-like lines in the face. Except for the scars.

  He thought then that he deserved those scars more than she did.

  “Arty says you’re a singer,” he said.

  “That was nice of him,” Rocky said. “Maybe when somebody actually pays me to sing, I will think so.” She’d find out on Monday if that would happen. Under Geena’s watchful eye, she’d called the Mashed Potato Lounge, and they said she could come in then. The thought of it made her stomach clench.

  “He says you’re great,” Mac said.

  “Diana Krall is a great singer,” she said. “Keely Smith is a great singer.”

  “Keely who?”

  Rocky sat up, the way someone does when a subject they love is the topic of conversation. “Keely Smith was married to Louis Prima. Big in the fifties and sixties. Did a lot of great songs with him. She was gone for a while but made a comeback. I love the way she can shape words.”

  “Shape words?”

  “That’s the art of it. Words make sounds. You can clank ’em or you can turn ’em into music.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Mac said. “I always used words like a club. To get my way.”

  “And now?”

  He sat back in his chair. “In the interest of full disclosure, as they say, I’m on parole.” He watched carefully to see what her expression would be. She didn’t look shocked. He appreciated that.

  “Want to know what I did time for?” Mac said.

  “If you want to tell me,” Rocky said.

  “Robbery.”

  “And you paid your debt to society?”

  “Not quite,” he said. “Parole is sort of like a waiting period. I have to keep my nose clean and do what my parole officer tells me to do. I can’t get into any trouble.”

  “Have you been in any trouble?”

  “What’s your definition of trouble?” Mac said.

  “I got lots of definitions of — ”

  The waitress appeared with chips and salsa, a Coke, and a bottle of Corona with a lime wedge sticking out of the top. And a shot glass with tequila.

  Mac watched as Rocky licked the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, then shook a little salt on it. She licked the salt, threw down the shot, then bit into the lime. She chased it with a swig of beer.

  “You’ve done that before,” Mac said.

  “And you?”

  “Tequila and I don’t get along. I was in San Diego once, in a park. I had a full bottle. About sixty seconds later I remember it being half-empty. That’s all I remember. Next day I woke up and I was in Mazatlan.”

  He took a sip of Coke and remembered the other time he had gone on a tequila ride, that one ending up worse. That one ending up with him in prison.

  He didn’t go into that. Instead, he told Rocky the story of meeting Arty at the church. He started to go into Arty’s conversion but saw only a cold expression on her face.

  “I’m sure Arty’s told you all about that,” Mac said.

  “He tried once,” Rocky said. “I stopped him.”

  “How come?”

  She shrugged. “It’s good for him, fine. I don’t need to hear about it.”

  “Don’t be too hard on him. He’s got the can’t help its.”

  “The whats?”

  “Can’t help its,” Mac said. “Pastor Jon put it that way once. In the Bible, there’s the book of Acts. It tells all about Christians right at the start. It was a Jewish thing at first, and the leaders in Jerusalem didn’t like the story being told.”

  “No?”

  “They took Peter and John in and told ’em, ‘Look, dudes, no more preaching Jesus. Got that?’ But they said, ‘We have to obey God. We can’t help preaching what we’ve seen and heard.’ That’s the can’t help its.”

  Rocky bit a corner off a tortilla chip. “I’ve got a friend who has that, only it’s for a swami.”

  “Swami?”

  “That’s what he calls himself,” she said, then leaned forward and whispered, “only I bet if you look real close, he’s probably a former insurance salesman from Schenectady.”

  Mac laughed. It felt good. He realized he hadn’t laughed in a long time.

  He liked her. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t putting up a false front. If you had scars deep enough outside or in, trying to fool people was stupid and useless. Scars made you honest, in a way. Forced truth on you.

  Like the terms of a lifelong parole, he thought.

  7:54 p.m.

  Ted unlocked the door and slipped into his apartment.

  He hated his apartment. It was near gang territory. At night he could hear the thumping of the cars as they played their music. He could hear the screams of drunken people. High peo
ple. Every now and then, he heard a gunshot.

  This is your life. This is as good as it’s going to get.

  But then he thought of her. Liz. He pictured her in the apartment with him, telling him how much she appreciated what he had done for her.

  He looked at the old chair with the frayed arms by his sliding glass door and saw her in it. She was dressed casually but provocatively. She was perfectly comfortable being in his presence. She was over the initial grief of losing her husband, and now she was ready to get on with her life.

  And she was here. With him.

  He would have cleaned the place up, of course. The two days of clothing he had piled by the TV would be long gone. He would have aired the place out and sprayed some freshener. And he would dust, naturally.

  Oh yes, everything would be ready.

  But then what? Would he even know what to do? What would be his next move?

  Who was he kidding? Dude, you’re a computer geek.

  Yes, a geek who has been handed an opportunity. What are you going to do about it?

  He peeled off his T-shirt, which was crusty with dried sweat. He threw it violently against the wall and watched it fall.

  No. He wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip away. Not this time.

  Next step, next step.

  That book. Where was that book? He went to his bedroom and opened the closet. He had several stacks of books in there because he hadn’t gotten around to buying more bookcases. He got on his knees and searched the spines. All the diet books were in one spot, sports books in another. He passed over Michael Jordan’s biography and a book on being a champion by Bruce Jenner.

  Where was that one book, the one his mom had given him a couple of birthdays ago in an obvious attempt to get him out of the doldrums?

  There it was. Blue cover. How to Have Confidence.

  He grabbed it. Glad he’d remembered it. He hadn’t read it yet, partly out of pride. No guy in his thirties wants his mom giving him self-help books. Especially not a mom who took most of his confidence away when he was in high school. Especially when he discovered Hendrix. He wanted to listen to Hendrix, and she said, “No Hendrix, no way. You’ll get on drugs. Not as long as you live here will you listen to Hendrix.”

  So confidence had he none.

  Ted took the book with him to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The half-empty jug of V8 was still there.

  He took down a glass from the cupboard and poured himself some juice. Then he took the glass and the book to the chair where he’d imagined her being. He put the glass on the side table and sat in the chair and opened the book to the table of contents.

  He scanned it and found the chapter heading “How to Create a Great Impression on Others.”

  Ted Gillespie took a long sip of V8 and turned to that chapter.

  This was the start of a new life.

  8:06 p.m.

  He was right about the burrito. It was one of the best Rocky had ever had. A perfect blend of beef, beans, and spices. A tortilla wrap of fresh and precise consistency. A jazz ensemble of taste.

  She started to relax a little. “You asked about my singing,” she said. “So what are you into?”

  He looked for a moment as if the question pained him, and she immediately wanted to take it back. She felt she might have opened a door he wanted to keep shut and that her intrusion breached an unspoken agreement between them.

  But then he blinked and, with a sheepish smile, said, “Flowers.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Why should I kid?”

  “I just . . . oops.” She wanted to hide. Another breach! Don’t yap so much!

  “I know,” he said. “Ex-cons and crocuses.”

  He was putting her at ease, ignoring her clumsiness. But the revelation was still surprising. “You plant crocuses?”

  “You like gardening?”

  “I want to like it,” she said. “I haven’t had much of a chance.”

  “I’m pretty new at it,” he said.

  “Why crocuses?”

  “I just like saying it. Crocus. It sounds like a Roman emperor, doesn’t it?”

  She laughed. “Aren’t those hard to grow out here?”

  “I’m hardheaded,” he said. “It’s an early spring flower, and there’s a shady part behind my shack. I’m hoping. I chilled the bulbs in the crisper of my refrigerator. I guess it’ll be a miracle if they grow, huh?”

  There was an innocence about the way he said it. A parolee who liked flowers. He was a mix of strength, hard edges, and a kind of raw transparency. The combo hit her like a wave crashing, threatening to knock her over.

  Don’t, she told herself. Do not start to feel.

  She kept telling herself that through the rest of the meal. When they were finally finished, ready to go see Arty, she almost sang a song of relief.

  8:53 p.m.

  Alone, but not.

  There was evidence of Arty everywhere. Even the place smelled like Arty, that Old Spice he used. Cologne and deodorant.

  Liz hadn’t counted on that one. To smell him.

  Even to miss him a little.

  She would have to get rid of all evidence of him, to keep from falling into carelessness. But not too soon. No, she’d have to play it right for the neighbors, for the law, for his friends.

  She could play it frosty. She learned that from Mama. Oh, how she had learned from Mama.

  She learned her history from Mama. They were survivor stock. Hardscrabble, not to be trifled with. Her grandfather, Gus Turner, from Arjay, Kentucky. A coal miner like his father before him.

  He met Grandmother Carrie at a church social. Not that Gus was a churchgoing man. He decidedly wasn’t, but he wanted to nab somebody “pure,” Mama said, and show Carrie the way of the world.

  Which he did, taking Carrie from her church and family and town and moving to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1954, the year Mama was born.

  By then Gus had decided that working underground was only for those who wanted to die young. So he got into a new line, the pawn business.

  Which was good to him. Helped him pay for booze.

  The Turner women, Mama said, always seemed to draw the boozers. It was a genetic trait, she said, like blue eyes and the ability to do math.

  The booze he paid for seemed to fuel his increasing rages over what he called the “tar baby problem.” Mama didn’t quite know what he meant, except that each night her daddy got to yelling at the TV news louder and louder.

  He started to stay away nights. Carrie, who by this time was drinking as much as her husband, tended to just fall asleep. When Mama’s daddy came home, he wouldn’t say exactly where he’d been. But Mama got the idea he met with other men about the “problem.”

  Then one night he didn’t come home at all.

  Mama never did find out where he went. He could have died, for all she knew. But later she heard some talk in town and got the idea that her daddy had to go away.

  Had to go away because a black man was shot in the back of the head while sitting in his car. A man who had been part of a boycott of local white merchants.

  They never could prove Liz’s granddaddy did it, but Mama said a gun went missing from the pawn shop and was never recovered.

  Grandma Carrie was left to carry on the business. She did for a few years, but eventually her mind broke. That’s the way Mama put it. Her mind broke. She was hospitalized one night, screaming about Satan trying to rip her clothes off and get to her.

  That broken mind, like Humpty Dumpty, never got put back together again.

  Mama was only seventeen when she took over the store. A couple of “smoothies” (she called them) tried to buy her out, but she refused. She was a Turner. Hardscrabble, and you didn’t want to mess with them.

  She would make it work.

  And she did. She learned. She met the right people, though they were the wrong people to the law.

  One of them, Old Dane Lowery, was what Mama called a “fence.” Liz
thought that was funny when she was little, but Old Dane got to be kind of a grandfather to her.

  He was around a lot more than her real father, Lester Summerville.

  Convicted rapist and local drunk, Lester Summerville.

  “One thing,” Mama used to say to Liz, after Lester had gone to prison and Liz asked about her father. “One thing I wish’d happened. I might could have forgiven him everything, even that. I wish’d he’d’ve given me a ring. You know, a diamond ring. They’re supposed to do that. Give you a ring. That brings good luck. I always wish I got me a ring. I got you though, and I’m glad of that.”

  A knock at the door, and Liz snapped back to the present. She almost wished she didn’t have to be here. Wished she could go back and start all over and find somebody else, not Arty.

  The knock again. Who could it be at this hour?

  She stayed in the chair. Then another knock. And a voice. “Arty? You home?”

  It was Arty’s friend.

  He knocked again. “Liz? You there?”

  She had to answer. If he got snoopy and looked in a window, he’d see her. Or hear her moving around.

  “Who’s there?” she said.

  “Hey, Liz. It’s Mac. I’m with Rocky.”

  Rocky?

  “Is Arty okay?” Mac said.

  Liz got up and put herself in mind of all that had happened and all that was at stake. She reminded herself she had been here before. With Mama and the police. She had done it then, and she could do it now, and no one was going to guess what was really going on. No one would ever guess.

  She smoothed her blouse and walked to the door, paused, rubbed her eyes hard, then opened it.

  “Liz, what’s wrong?” Mac said. He saw her red eyes, her face knotted in anguish. And the large bandage on her forehead.

  “Arty!” Liz cried and fell into Mac’s arms. She sobbed into his chest.

  He held her, glancing at Rocky, who looked almost angry. He shook his head at her, slowly. To Liz he whispered, “What is it, now? You can tell me.”

  “It’s horrible!” Liz’s voice was muffled.

  “Is he hurt?”

  Liz’s face came up from his chest, cheeks wet. “Dear God, Mac. He’s dead.”