Snowman

by Abramson, Mark

  "Well, it turns out that CousinDianne isn’t really my cousin after all!"

  "Your Aunt Ruth’s daughter isn’t really your cousin?

  How is that possible?"

  "Aunt Ruth and Uncle Dan weren’t her real parents.

  They switched the babies in the hospital right after Dianne was born."

  "Gee, what a bummer! Are they gonna sue the hospital or is it too late for that?"

  "No, it’s not like that at all. Ruth’s baby, my real cousin, was a boy. He was stillborn the same day that Dianne popped out. Her mother was Aunt Ruth’s best friend, but she wasn’t married and the father was killed in Viet Nam before he even knew she was pregnant."

  "How could they get away with something like that?"

  "I don’t know. Who cares? Aunt Ruth said it was all done legally, but then no one ever talked about it again. All I know is I’m thrilled not to be related to that nasty woman."

  "Wow! What does Dianne have to say about all this?"

  "Get this." Tim said. "She’s not as upset about being born to some woman who didn’t happen to be married at the time…

  What did they call it back then?

  "Politely?" Nick asked. "Out of wedlock. Impolitely… a bastard."

  "Right, I already called her every B-word I could think of… bitch, bimbo, bigot… but ‘out of wedlock’… it sounds kinda funny nowadays."

  "Yeah, it does when you say it out loud."

  "Wedlock." Tim laughed. "It sounds like some kind of bondage device or some kinky position or maybe a wrestling hold."

  "Are you trying to get me excited, Snowman?"

  "Hah. Not over the phone. You’ll have to wait ’til I see you in person. But hey, can’t you just hear someone complaining, ‘we ordered our new wedlock from Fort Troff in Atlanta and then we found out we could have gotten one cheaper at Mr. S right here in San Francisco and not had to pay all those shipping costs."

  Nick laughed and Tim went on, "Get this. Dianne is also Jewish!"

  "Is that a problem for her, too?"

  "Yes! She’s one of those born-agains, you know. She freaked! She’s so hateful she started screaming how she’d rather be Chinese! I don’t know what she’s got against Asians, but you should have heard her! I’m sure she’s offended most of the staff in Davies Hospital by now, if she hadn’t already. They’re very racially integrated and she’s just vicious! So, what’s your news, Nick?"

  "It pales in comparison, but I just signed the big contract I’ve been hoping for. There’s this guy from back east who inherited tons of money, so he bought a winery he wants me to landscape. He’s adding new buildings, including a huge tasting room and visitors’ center. It’s just south of St. Helena, over in the Napa Valley. I’m driving over there Thursday to have a look around and then I’ll draw up some plans to show him. They should be ready for my crew to get started in about three or four weeks. Do you want to come and work for me this summer? I’ll need to hire more people."

  "That’s great," Tim said, although he knew he was still in no shape to do heavy manual labor and the new job would keep Nick busy and the two of them apart more than ever. "It looks like I’ll be going back to work at Arts in a couple of weeks."

  "Good for you, Snowman! Are you sure you’re feeling up to it?"

  "I guess so…"

  "Hey, I thought I’d drive down to the city tonight and take you out to dinner to celebrate my new contract… if you feel like it."

  "Sure," Tim said. "You bet."

  "Just name the place and make the reservations, okay?

  Surprise me. The sky’s the limit," Nick said. "Anyplace except Orphan Andy’s. We can go there for breakfast in the morning if you like. Hey, have you heard the latest news?"

  "What news? I only glanced at the morning paper."

  "No, it wouldn’t have made the paper. It happened since then. I had the radio on in the office just before my client got here and they’ve found some more body parts."

  "Really?"

  "Yes, in San Francisco Bay."

  "Whereabouts?"

  "Pier 39," Nick said. "You know where the sea lions are?"

  "Yeah, but I heard the sea lions all disappeared, went to Oregon or someplace."

  "They did but they’ve all come back now, according to the guy on the radio. He said they were out there playing, tossing back and forth some things that were floating in the water. The tourists were taking pictures, as usual, and then a human leg landed up on the dock. One woman fainted and people started screaming when they realized the sea lions were tossing around body parts! Everyone had a camera, so there should be tons of pictures on the news later… if they dare to show them. Gross."

  "Wow, I’ll bet. I’ll turn on the TV and see if there’s any breaking news about it now."

  "If not, it should be on the local news at five. According to the radio, they’ve found two legs, two arms with the hands missing—maybe one of them was the partial hand that Arturo and I found in the dumpster behind the restaurant—and a male torso, but no head. Some of the restaurants along there just closed up for the rest of the day. I guess nobody was hungry after witnessing that. I can see how it might kill your appetite."

  "If those came from Hartford Street, they must have been pretty well decomposed by now. Gross is right!"

  "They would have been, Snowman," Nick said, "but the body parts must have just been dumped there today because they were still frozen solid. That’s why they were floating, I guess."

  "More like an iceman than a snowman, huh?"

  "Hey, I’ve got another call, but I should be in town by no later than seven if that’s good for you."

  "You bet. I guess there are several restaurants I can take off my list of where to eat tonight."

  "Sorry, man… like I said, it’s up to you. I don’t care where we go. Surprise me. Anyplace you want, Snowman."

  "After what you just told me, I’m thinking vegetarian at this point," Tim said. "See you at seven."

  "Later, Babe. I’ll bring along my new wedlock and tie you up after dinner, okay?"

  "You bet, stud," Tim hung up the phone and turned on the television. There was no breaking news, so he crawled under the top blanket on his bed and a nap seemed like just the right thing at the moment.

  Tim’s dream began as little more than glimpses of light like night scenes in a movie shot from the window of a fast-moving train. Then there was the cat. Bartholomew was licking Tim’s face, kneading his paws into Tim’s shoulder, telling him it was time. They were in his Aunt Ruth’s apartment on Collingwood Street but Tim still lived there and Bartholomew did too. This was how dreams were. Tim had gotten used to the way familiar things changed form and time and space. He and the cat had never lived in that apartment at the same time. That meant he had to be dreaming and this might be one of those dreams like his grandmother had, the dreams that meant something.

  The cat couldn’t really speak, not even in his dream, but Tim heard the message loud and clear so he got up and put on his shoes. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he was wearing pajamas with cactus plants and donkeys and sombreros on them, the same pajamas he’d worn when he was a little boy.

  He grabbed a jacket and walked out the door, headed down Castro Street in his little boy pajamas and a black leather jacket and the sneakers that he kept in his locker at the gym.

  They were good sneakers for working out, but not great sneakers to run in. Still, he knew he could run if he had to.

  Tim started to laugh. Yes, he had to be dreaming! He would never go out in public dressed like this. He outgrew these pajamas before puberty, but they fit him great right now. Tim thought about the guys who walked around the neighborhood stark naked. That fad hadn’t really caught on, maybe because it wasn’t warm enough lately, but Tim might start a new trend.

  Everyone would start wearing pajamas in public soon, but on Castro Street the pajamas would come in leather… or denim…

  or Spandex.

  When Tim got to the
restaurant Artie was behind the bar and James was at the waiters’ station. Tim walked past all the customers seated at the bar and no one turned around to look at his ridiculous outfit. People he knew were sitting there eating and Tim might as well have been invisible. He was glad no one laughed and pointed.

  Tim went through the swinging doors to the kitchen where Jake loaded dinner plates up one arm. Arturo had his back to them and Jake didn’t notice Tim either, so he kept on walking… out the back door. Nick was standing beside the dumpster holding a long tool like a shovel or a broom in both his hands. Nick didn’t notice Tim either, so he walked up closer to find out what Nick was doing. The tool was a rake. Nick was stirring the dumpster with a garden rake. The dumpster was filled with human eyeballs in marinara sauce. All the irises were green, emerald green, the brightest green Tim had ever seen.

  Chapter 20

  uth wanted nothing more than to get that horrible white box and its gruesome contents out of her R apartment. She wanted to call Captain O’Sullivan right away, but Teresa insisted on calling Peter Parker, her new boyfriend, first. Ruth was ready to scream by the time she got him on the phone, but Teresa thought it would look better in the eyes of his superiors if Peter turned over this new evidence before anyone else could claim it.

  The three of them sat around Ruth’s kitchen table and Teresa answered most of his questions, which didn’t take long.

  She was the one who had found the box, but she’d already told Peter nearly everything they knew on the phone.

  Now Peter wasn’t here as Teresa’s new beau, but as Officer Parker. He handled the evidence with sterile latex gloves, put the threatening note, the white box with its crumpled newspapers and the pierced human nose in the zip-lock bag inside a larger evidence box to take with him back to the station.

  He agreed that there wasn’t much likelihood of finding fingerprints besides those of Ruth and Teresa. They hadn’t found prints at the meth lab on Hartford Street either, so there were none for comparisons. Whatever person or persons involved were no doubt just as careful as the police were.

  "Shouldn’t we call Captain O’Sullivan now?" Ruth asked Peter.

  "No, Miss Taylor. Please, Ma-am. Let me handle it. He’s finally got the day off today and I’d say he sure needs one. He’s been in a nasty mood and snapping at everyone lately and I’d hate to disturb him and the Mrs. at home.

  Ruth promised to keep her doors locked and Peter promised to have someone drive by the place regularly, just in case whoever threatened her decided to came back. Now that Peter Parker and Teresa were gone, Ruth felt more relieved than frightened to be alone. She picked up her coffee and took a sip but it was cold, so she dumped it and rinsed the cup in the sink.

  Things seemed almost back to normal until Ruth sighed and took a deep breath. Something didn’t smell right. The nose and the eyeball had been frozen solid and nobody had opened that zip-lock bag and let the smell out. There was no need. It was easy enough for her and Teresa to see what was inside once they’d read the note.

  "Maybe I’m only imagining things, but some fresh air in here wouldn’t hurt now, would it?" Ruth said out loud as she opened the back door and the kitchen window, even though the temperature was cool and the sky still overcast. The apartment felt much too quiet and lonely now that Officer Parker and Teresa had left. If the cat were home she could pretend to be talking to him, but under the circumstances she would just have to talk out loud to herself. "Oh, Bartholomew… you bad, bad boy! Where the heck did you disappear to this time?"

  She heard a truck shift gears on the hill going up Castro Street, the pop-pop-pop of a motor scooter and the rattle of the garbage haulers from Sunset Scavengers. Most ground floor windows in San Francisco had bars on them, even in the nicest neighborhoods. Even without bars, the window only opened a few inches, just wide enough for the cat to climb back in. Ruth hoped so. She missed Bartholomew. When he did come home again she vowed to be especially nice to him and give him a special treat. He’d suffered through Dianne’s visit just like the rest of them.

  Ruth sat down again and called Sam’s private number.

  She didn’t want to alarm him, but he would be upset if he heard about the gruesome delivery on her doorstep from anyone else.

  If she told him first, he’d be able to hear the calmness in her voice and know that she was alright. Ruth heard a recorded voice instruct her to leave a message. Sam must be in a meeting with a client. Ruth took a deep breath and smiled. She’d always heard that smiling made one’s telephone voice more pleasant.

  "Hi Sam, it’s me… Ruth. Please give me a call when you get this. There’s been a rather nasty development on this end, I’m afraid, but I’m fine—really. I don’t want to worry you, but I’d feel an awfully lot better if you could drive up this evening and maybe even spend the night here. Then I can tell you all about it in person. If I’m not home when you get this message, please try my cell phone. Thanks Sam."

  She hung up and hoped that sounded okay. Now she was even more concerned about Bart than her own safety. If Sam knew about the threatening note, he would whisk her out of there. If she refused the safety of his house in Hillsborough, he would insist on taking her to a hotel. As much as she enjoyed room service and spa treatments and sweeping views of the city, there was no way Bartholomew could find her if she was ensconced in a suite at the Fairmont or the Mark Hopkins.

  Ruth picked up one of the flyers she’d promised to bring to Arts. The photograph of this young man with or without the gold ring through his nostril would be of no use, now. She wondered how long ago the picture was taken. Now she felt sick to think that the nose in the photograph and one of those once bright and lively emerald eyes had been right here on her kitchen table a few moments ago.

  She reached for the phone and punched in the number at the bottom of the flyer. She wanted to do it quickly before she chickened out. The police should be notifying Patrick, she thought, but it would be better for him to hear the news from her, instead of from a total stranger. He was the one who made that remark about her seeming like somebody’s mom. Even though she wasn’t even Dianne’s mother, she liked the idea of the kids in the neighborhood thinking of her that way. Some of them, no doubt, didn’t have moms that were, to use Patrick’s word, "cool."

  Ruth was so used to leaving messages, she had no idea what she would say if a living person answered her call, so it came as a relief when a recording from E.T. clicked on. It didn’t sound like Patrick’s voice. It could have even been Darryl’s. Ruth shuddered at the thought, but she wasn’t sure how large an organization E.T. was or how often they changed their outgoing message. She tried to summon up a smile and the same calm voice she’d used when she called Sam:

  "Hello… My name is Ruth Taylor and I’m trying to reach a young fellow named Patrick. I’m sorry I don’t even remember his last name. I probably should, since we used to work together at Arts Bar and Restaurant on Castro Street, but anyway… This has to do with a friend of his and the flyers he gave me and… um… if he could please give me a call I’d sure appreciate it, okay? Thanks. Bye, now."

  Ruth no sooner hung up than she had to call right back again because she’d forgotten to leave her number. This time she felt her voice quaver a little and it seemed that she must have sounded on the verge of tears, so she quickly left her cell phone number, her home phone, Sam’s home number and even the telephone number at Arts, just to be on the safe side.

  Her next call was to her old friend Cindy, Dianne’s biological mother in Boston. She looked at the clock on the kitchen wall and it was barely noon, but Ruth got a bottle of white wine from the fridge and poured herself half a glass just to fortify her. It would be three hours later in Boston. This was the perfect time.

  Ruth had never really believed this day would come.

  She’d grown so used to Dianne and the way things were that she had never taken the time to fully imagine this moment. It was just as well that she hadn’t had time to dread it. Ruth always beli
eved that the fear of something was usually worse than the

  "something" was.

  Ruth tended to doodle when she was nervous. By the time she finally hung up the phone with Cindy, she had no idea how much time had passed, but the pad of paper under her hand was nearly full. Her mouth felt dry, so she took another sip of wine and emptied the glass. That was when she noticed that the bottle had mysteriously made its way from the refrigerator to the kitchen table and it was empty, too. It couldn’t have been more than half full to begin with, could it?

  Ruth was so dazed that she could barely remember the words she’d used to explain to Cindy what had happened.

  Maybe it was the wine, but the entire phone call seemed to have taken place outside of real time. Ruth was sure there had been no tears or raised voices. As the evening wore on and during the next few days the conversation would come back to her memory in bits and pieces like a dream. And in the coming months it would fade away as if it never took place.