Pittsburgh Noir

by Kathleen George

  Waiting for the police, she heard someone coming down the stairs, and rushed to the front window in time to see the girl hustle between the parked cars and across the street with a duffel bag. Anna Lucia couldn’t be sure it was her plan that had worked, but in any case she was grateful. She thought Evelyn would be too.

  Upstairs there was no sound. She considered going up, but it was three in the morning and Eddie might not want to see her. She sat by her front window, watching from behind the blinds as the police arrived with their lights going.

  They rang the bell, then banged on the door. After a time, Anna Lucia went out with one hand holding her robe closed at her neck and let them in.

  “You the complainant?” the big one asked.

  “They’re fighting again.” She pointed and stood there as they climbed the stairs.

  A couple minutes later the short one came down. His forehead was sweating. “You said ‘they’re fighting.’ Who’s ‘they’?”

  She told him about Eddie. No, she didn’t know the girl’s last name.

  “Any idea where she might be?”

  “She ran off toward Liberty right after I called you.”

  He asked if Anna Lucia knew what the woman was wearing. She didn’t exactly, but let him know about the duffel bag and her complexion.

  “It’s a good thing you called,” the policeman said. “He’s pretty bad off. We’ve got West Penn en route. In the meantime I’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Please, come in.”

  There was no need to tell him everything. He’d seen it too many times. They were drunk and fighting and the girl stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife.

  Anna Lucia cried, both then and after he’d left. She prayed. God knew that had never been her intent. Maybe it was inevitable, with the two of them. Still, it seemed awful, and needless. The girl would sink back into the underworld of the undocumented. Eddie would live, but would need round-the-clock care; he’d be moved into an assisted-living place in Wilkinsburg, where Anna Lucia would visit him once a month, bringing her famous lasagne.

  Once he was gone, she had the rugs torn up and the walls painted a sunny custard yellow. She hired a crew of teenagers from St. Joe’s to help her move. She had a lot of stuff, and some of it was heavy: the loveseat with the brocade slipcover, her mother’s hutch, the marble-top table. Miraculously, it all fit. She stood in the middle of her new living room, directing the boys—a little more this way, a little more—until she had everything just the way she wanted it.

  PART II

  THREE RIVERS

  PRAY FOR RAIN

  BY NANCY MARTIN

  Highland Park

  When the floodwaters rose, I went to the grocery store because that’s what normal people do. They buy milk and bread and toilet paper, and good girls even buy necessities for their neighbors too.

  When I got back from the store around ten in the morning, I parked in the marina lot and grabbed the bag of groceries off the passenger seat. I bailed out into a driving rain and ran across the lot, hoping I looked like a regular person—someone with nothing on her mind but getting through the storm. Before I reached the gate to the boat launch, I wondered how much the flood had washed away.

  Over the weekend, a monster hurricane had gathered speed over the gulf and tore a path of waste and death across Louisiana before heading up the Mississippi. The storm’s momentum carried heavy weather as far as the Ohio River Valley and finally stalled here in Pittsburgh, where a deluge that smelled like the ocean fell for three days straight. The three rivers rose until the weathermen on television starting yelping about the flood of 1936, sending the whole city’s population crowding into the grocery stores to grab supplies.

  My old sneakers skidded at the top of the boat launch, and I grabbed the open gate to regain my balance. My houseboat was still there, riding with her lines pulled tight against the cleats of the dock, but the water had come another foot up the concrete launch during the hour it had taken me to get to the store and back. Now the Allegheny swept masses of junk and debris past the few remaining boats tied up at the marina. An empty doghouse floated by, trailing a length of chain. Half a plastic Santa bobbed by on the turmoil of cold brown water. He rolled with the current until one mittened hand rose in the air as if hailing a rescue boat.

  “Oh God.” I stared at the torrent of garbage rushing on the flood.

  From upriver, an enormous tree suddenly roiled up from the surge—muddy roots, thick trunk, branches and all— heading straight for the marina. I caught a breath as the tree slammed into The Hines, the old wooden cruiser in the first slip. The shudder reverberated down the whole dock, and unmanned, The Hines tore loose from her mooring. The boat spun out into the channel. A jagged hole had been ripped in her hull, and ugly brown water poured through it, rolling the boat lower.

  Her owners had fled with nearly everyone else and weren’t here to see their grand old lady list down into the river. The swift current swept her past the old salvage yard and the closed steel mill toward the dam. As I watched, the boat struck the dam and split apart. Her glorious upper deck washed over the spillway and disappeared, but the rest of her—the ugly inner workings of the old boat—hung there on the lip, surging and groaning with the flood. Eventually, she’d sink down into the dark water to join the industrial waste that lay at the bottom of this stretch of river. Down there was an underwater junkyard full of horrors I didn’t want to think about.

  The tree remained by the marina, though, snagged beneath the surface of the floodwaters alongside my boat. The unseen impediment had hooked it like an anchor that shifted only slightly with the rhythm of rising water.

  I ran down the concrete steps to the dock. Secured a few slips down from where The Hines had been tied, my family’s boat rode high on the flood. She wasn’t agile on the water or remotely as beautiful as The Hines, but we used her to putter downriver to the stadium to wait for fly balls on warm summer nights, so she was still seaworthy. Tied to this dock, I thought she’d be safe.

  I thought we’d both be safe.

  I grabbed the rail of the boat and leaped across to the deck. I could feel the surge of the flood beneath my unsteady feet. Carefully, I gripped the wet handrail and scrambled around the stern to peer over the opposite rail. The tree lurched in the current there, just a few yards away.

  Next door, Ralph Potter came to the shelter of his cabin doorway. He was barefoot and shirtless despite the cold, wearing jeans that rode low on his hips. He grinned and bellowed across the rain. “It’s Bible time, Laurie. We’re the last ones left! Better pack your stuff and find a hotel room.”

  I shouted back. “You leaving, Ralphie?”

  He laughed and shook his head. He lifted his coffee cup to me—probably holding his morning hair of the dog. “I’ll go down with my ship!”

  Big talk, but that was Ralphie. He’d come home from Baghdad with a crazy look in his eyes. I knew he sold a little dope to keep body and soul together, but otherwise he hung around the marina drinking, fishing, and sometimes howling at the moon.

  I shouted, “What about this tree? It could wipe us all out!”

  “Pray for more rain,” he called with a cackling laugh. “The only way that tree is leaving is on more water!”

  “We’re all going to drown!”

  More laughing. “Aw, you know more boaters drown from beer than floods!”

  He was right, of course. The bodies of most drowned boaters were found with their flies down.

  “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Slept like a baby! Never heard the thunder or lightning. You?”

  No, I hadn’t slept much.

  The rest of our small community of marina dwellers had wisely hauled their boats out of the water before the river officially hit flood stage and the heaviest debris began to boil past. Yesterday, the fire department had come by to deliver their warnings—get out now, they’d said, because we’re not comin
g back to rescue you later. All of the other regulars obeyed and cleared out before nightfall, except crazy Ralphie. And me.

  “If you get scared, you know where you can cuddle up, right?”

  I mustered a grin and nodded. “You have groceries?”

  “Could use some coffee.”

  I tossed him a can. He caught it one-handed and cradled it against his bare chest.

  Above us, a black pickup truck pulled into the marina and slid to a stop on the slick asphalt. A man in overalls and a parka climbed out of the truck, a cell phone to his ear. He ended the call, then jogged across the parking lot. He pushed through the gate left unlocked by the last hastily fleeing boater.

  He shouted my name and peeled back the hood of his coat. It was Nolan McKillip.

  Ralphie gave me a raised eyebrow and disappeared into his own boat.

  “Now what?” I muttered to myself. But I raised a hand and waved at Nolan.

  He bypassed the concrete boat launch where foam and debris surged up the ramp and made for slippery footing. Instead, he rattled down the steps and strode purposefully up the boardwalk, wind at his back. Then he saw the huge tree, riding the water perilously close to my boat.

  “Are you crazy?” he shouted over the roar of river. “You’re going to get swept away!”

  “It’s an adventure!” I called, managing a little cheer. “Help me with the lines?”

  “What can I do?”

  “I’ll toss this one to you. Take it up to those pines and tie me off?”

  He nodded and held up his hands to receive the line.

  I tossed my grocery bag, minus my coffee, into the cabin, then tied a buoy to a length of nylon rope, coiled it up, and threw it expertly—like riding a bike, a skill never forgotten. Nolan, not a boater, caught it clumsily, then struggled up the muddy bank and wrapped the line around a listing pine. He made a hash of the knot, but it would hold. I repeated the process, and he tied off the second line to a different tree.

  He came back down the bank, rubbing the crud off his hands, and there was nothing to do but invite him to stay.

  “You want to come aboard?” I called, but I heard my own lack of cordiality.

  If he heard it too, he ignored it. Nolan jumped from wet dock to thrusting deck, and I made a grab for his arm, but he didn’t need steadying. He landed lightly and gathered me up in a hug—quite an experience since he’d taken to pounding iron and feeding a forge in his studio. He had muscle now, and shoulders that felt wonderful to cling to. Folded into his warm frame, I felt safe for an instant.

  But then he got a closer look at me, and his eyes widened. “Jesus, what happened?”

  “It’s nothing. I was trying to start the pump, but the lever kicked back on me.” I started to turn away. “A silly mistake. It looks worse than it feels.”

  Nolan cradled my cheek in his warm hand. “Sweetheart.”

  I jerked my head to avoid his touch. To take the sting from that little rejection, I smiled up at him and hoped it didn’t look false. “Come inside before you get soaked.”

  In the cabin, I kept my slicker on. “It’s not much, but it’s home.”

  He unzipped his parka, shook the rain from his hair, and glanced around. I tried not to imagine what he thought. The cabin looked like the studio apartment of a careless grad student. Or maybe a fugitive on the run. Unmade bed in an alcove and a cluttered kitchen with little more than a hot plate, dorm fridge, microwave, and dishes in the sink. The gray morning light did little to warm the cabin.

  It was all a far cry from the converted carriage house where I lived before it all started. On my parents’ estate, I’d had the run of the grounds and half the carriage house for a studio. My apartment—furnished with Mother’s priceless castoffs and paintings by friends and family—overlooked the swimming pool. At night, with the tiny white lights glittering in the trees, it had been an elegant setting for parties when I felt like having friends over for drinks and talk.

  How far away that seemed now, even though the estate was only a mile or two from the houseboat.

  Nolan looked toward my easel and paint boxes that were stashed, unused, in a corner with a tangle of buoys and bumpers. A couple of crushed beer cans in the mess finished the picture.

  With a frown on his brow, he turned on me. “Laurie, you can’t be serious about staying here.”

  I said, “I know what I’m doing. I’ve boated all my life.”

  “But what’s the point of staying? This flood is dangerous.”

  “It’s where I live now. It’s my home.”

  “But— Look, your mother called me. She’s scared to death.”

  “She called you, of all people? Why?”

  “She worried, that’s why. I am too. Staying here—it’s nuts.”

  “I’m not stupid. I’ll leave if it gets too bad. Coffee?”

  “It’s not just the flood,” Nolan said. “She said Dennis called the house.”

  I snatched up my grocery bag and pushed aside some dishes to make room for it on the kitchen counter. Then I fumbled with the coffee pot, trying to tamp down panic.

  “She said Dennis was drunk on the phone with her. Has he been here?”

  “What fool would come down here in weather like this?” I mustered some humor and gave him a shaky smile over my shoulder.

  Nolan still frowned. “We’re afraid for your safety.”

  “So am I,” I said lightly. “Which is why I went to the police. Do you mind if I zap some coffee instead of making fresh?”

  “I don’t care. Laurie—”

  “Look, I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I’m not helpless. Why does everybody treat me as if I am? The police will take care of Dennis. We have to let the legal system work.”

  Nolan caught my arm and pulled me around. “Forget about coffee. Talk to me.”

  Looking up into his worried face, I tried to recall how long I’d known Nolan. He’d been in my orbit since before I could remember—the son of family friends in a rarified social circle. When my grandfather died the year I was sixteen, he’d come solemnly to the funeral with his father—both in suits and ties—and we’d eyed each other with covert interest. Months later, he smuggled me a drink from the bar at a cousin’s wedding at a swanky country club. When he gave me the glass, Nolan noticed the paint under my nails, and we’d gone outside to talk about art in the evening air while the music played.

  His older brothers went into business and law, but Nolan had grown up artistic and intuitive. With a discerning eye and passion too. Playing rugby evolved into building gigantic steel mobiles—the kind corporations bought to display in their impressive headquarters. He and I had gone our separate ways, but there had been potential between us. For a while.

  Nolan watched me, his expression going very still. “Tell me the truth. Did Dennis come here to see you?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  Whether he believed me or not, I couldn’t be sure. He released my arm and said, “Your mother says there’s a gun on the boat. Is that true?”

  “I have no idea. There might have been one years ago, but surely not anymore.”

  “I have one, if you need it.”

  That surprised me. But I said, “I wouldn’t know how to use a gun.”

  Nolan’s gaze didn’t waver. “I made some calls after your mother contacted me. I talked to his brother. Laurie, Dennis phoned from this location last night.”

  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. “How do you know that?”

  “He has a fancy app on his cell phone—a GPS. So does his brother. He made the call, Laurie. Did you see him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But the call.”

  “He might have come around the marina.” Uncertainly, I glanced out the window and tried to remember. How long had I left the curtains open last night? I gathered my wits and said, “Nolan, I don’t want you mixed up in this.”

  “In what?”

  “Dennis and me.”

  “Jesus, are you ba
ck together with him?”

  “God, no.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Please, I don’t want you to—Dennis will go away eventually, but until then, you need to keep your distance.”

  Nolan seized me by the elbows, his hands insistent. “I can help, Laurie. I’ll break his neck if he hurts you again.”

  I smiled. For all his size, I couldn’t see Nolan hurting anyone. He was too sweet. Sometimes so sweet my teeth ached.

  But Dennis? He had swept into the city like a pirate from New York and conned a local art dealer into giving him a share in a gallery. Then the hoodwinking started. Nothing could ever be proved, of course, but there were commissions stolen, artists cheated, buyers angry. The gallery owner retired hastily and fled to Florida. Dennis’s life-of-the-party personality and undeniable sex appeal—for both men and women, it turned out—kept him riding high a little longer.

  He’d come courting me before his real trouble started. The reputation of my family—painters, all of us, especially Daddy, a portraitist and teacher at the university—made me a kind of blue blood in the city creative class, something Dennis needed to keep going. Respectability, that’s what I’d brought to the match. And he’d brought—well, something I had avoided since a stormy love affair fell apart two years ago. Sex, at first. The kind that made me lose my head. And more excitement too—one temptation after another to lure me deeper into his world.

  But Dennis soon ran the gallery into the ground and took my good name with it.

  The first time he hit me had been at Thanksgiving. His frustration boiled over. Somehow his financial problems were all my fault. He knocked out my eye tooth—humiliating as much as painful.