Falls the Shadow

by William Lashner

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “Sure enough. It was in the way Sonenshein sat on the stand, smugly confident. It was in the way Dalton stared at me, almost like she was hoping I wouldn’t fall for it. And because it was little Jerry Sonenshein, the AV geek up there. Remember how the bartender at his club said that he was always taping the help, to see if they were stealing? Real James Bond stuff, he said. And remember how wherever we ran into him there was a little flower in a vase that he was always fiddling with, both in the cigar lounge and in his downstairs office? He was taping us, and if he was taping us, he was taping her.”

  “That means we can’t use Velma either.”

  “Right.” Because Dalton would simply play the tape to refute her story.

  “So now we have nothing. We’re in the middle of a murder trial without a strategy, without a theory, without a suspect.”

  “But we’ve got each other.”

  “Oh, God,” she said as she put a hand over her face. “It’s hopeless.” And then, with her hand still over her face, she began to cry. It wasn’t loud, it wasn’t maudlin, it was mostly just a few shakes of her shoulders, but it was enough to tear at my heart. I looked again at the picture of Leesa Dubé, who had once loved François, and then at the woman with apparently the same affliction, crying a few feet away. It was a plague.

  “Tell me about your father,” I said quietly.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, shook her head as if she were shaking a rattle, squinted at me. “What?”

  “I asked about your father.”

  “I heard you,” she said, giving a quick rub to her nose. “What does he have to do with anything? He lives in Cherry Hill, he’s getting a hip transplant, he plays golf.”

  “Really?”

  “I guess it’s more like he plays at golf. But you’ve met him. He’s been to the office.”

  “That’s right. Of course.”

  “So?”

  “Is he your real father?”

  “Victor?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “He’s been the only father I’ve ever known. He married my mother when I was six.”

  “So he’s your stepfather. What happened to your real father?”

  “He died. Victor?”

  “How?”

  “He just did. Victor, stop.”

  “You never told me what happened to your real father.”

  “That’s right, I never did.”

  “Do you want to now?”

  “No, I don’t. Victor, what are we going to do about François?”

  “I don’t know.” I picked up the photograph of Leesa Dubé, showed it to Beth. “She looks awfully familiar, doesn’t she?”

  “A woman that pretty, I don’t think you’d forget.”

  “No, I don’t think I would.”

  “And I must admit she had marvelous teeth. All right, I’m going to go talk to our client before they ship him out for the night.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you going to come up with something? Anything?”

  “I hope so,” I said, though what I really meant was, I doubt it.

  She stood up wearily, made to leave the room, and then stopped. “By the way,” she said, “someone mailed back that key you lost.”

  “I didn’t lose a key.”

  “You must have. It came for you, in an envelope, with no note.” She pointed to a manila envelope addressed to me, with no postage and no return address.

  “Hand-delivered?” I said.

  She shrugged.

  I emptied the envelope into my hand. A single bronze key with the number 27 stamped on it and the word E-ZEE.

  “It’s not mine,” I said. “It must be a mistake.”

  “Then toss it,” she said before leaving the room.

  I turned the key over in my hand, back and forth, trying to figure what it might be, and failing. The hell with it, I thought as I slipped it into my pocket. I had other things to concern me just then.

  I had felt a strange hope for a moment, a hope that I’d been wrong when I imagined the little girl in the back of the Pontiac to be Beth. Yes, I knew her father, a charming man with a slight limp and a penchant for bad jokes. No, Beth was not the type to be haunted by her past. And yes, she would have told me the truth of it long before. We were best friends. There were no secrets between us. But of course I had secrets I’d never told her. And, it appeared, she had secrets of her own.

  So it was just as I had imagined. I had mentioned my concerns about Beth to Whitney Robinson. Whit must have told Dr. Bob. Dr. Bob must have burrowed like a mole into Beth’s past to see what he could find. And then, in my next appointment, Dr. Bob had maneuvered his one-sided conversation to spill the horrific events of that past to me. The whole chain of events made me feel like I had fallen into a pit of sludge.

  What a strange man he was, Dr. Bob. Dentist to François’s first defense attorney. Dentist to the troubled boy who testified to seeing François at the crime scene. Dentist now to François’s second defense attorney. He seemed in the middle of everything. Well, almost everything.

  I picked up the picture of Leesa Dubé. Turned it one way, turned it the other. What was it Beth had said? And I must admit she had marvelous teeth. And they were, weren’t they? Like a pretentious movie director, I used my fingers to frame the photograph so that only her smile was visible.

  Holy molars, Batman.

  Now I knew why the picture seemed so familiar. I had seen that smile before, every time I stepped into Dr. Bob’s office. It was on the wall, part of the smile hall of fame. Dr. Bob was Leesa Dubé’s dentist, too. Did that explain anything? Who the hell knew? But I was going to find out.

  I picked up the phone, placed a call to his office, got the great man himself on the phone.

  “Hey, Doc,” I said, “you want to go out for a beer?”

  57

  The shoreline of Chicago is one of the great sights to behold from behind the window of a passenger jet. The smooth surface of the great lake seems to glisten with endless promise, and then, there in the distance, at the very edge of the water, rises a fabulous assortment of idiosyncratic towers, all shapes and sizes and colors, all shining majestically in the sun. You feel, while still over the expanse of Lake Michigan, that you are soaring toward Oz.

  Which I found somewhat appropriate, because just then I was flying into Chicago to discover the man behind the curtain.

  You must never underestimate the effect of childhood trauma, had said Dr. Bob. It often explains everything. Look in the past, and the present becomes clear. He was talking about Tanya Rose, and I believe he was trying to explain, in his roundabout way, what was actually going on with Beth. But as a species we are relentlessly self-referential. If Dr. Bob was giving me advice on finding the root of Beth’s character, maybe he was inadvertently giving me advice on finding the root of his own. After our meeting in the bar, with the bizarre fistfight and the blood on the floor, I figured it was time to peek into my dentist’s childhood.

  But where had that childhood even been?

  To his patients, Dr. Pfeffer’s boyhood home seemed to be as mysterious as the rest of his life. Carol had listed the possibilities with a sense of wonder: Albuquerque, Seattle, Burma. Burma? Is there even a Burma anymore? I decided to forget about the rumors and think it through on my own. It wasn’t as if Dr. Bob hadn’t given me enough clues. There was the fishing he did as a boy, yellow perch, he’d said, using fathead minnows as bait. There was the way he referred to soda as pop and the way he said he was used to cold weather. All this indicated that he spent his formative years somewhere in the upper Midwest. But what narrowed it down for me, I suppose, more than anything, was his antipathy for the New York Mets.

  Now, I could relate to his loathing. I grew up a Phillies fan, and we feel about the Mets the way Pakistan feels about India; the nuclear option is never off the table. But I know they don’t feel the same way in Albuquerque or Seattle or Rangoon. In t
hose far-off places, the Mets are just another bad baseball team with ugly uniforms. But that’s not all they were to Dr. Bob.

  Our plane headed north along the coast of Lake Michigan before leaning to the left and slipping inland, toward O’Hare. Even though the seat-belt sign was on, I climbed to the other side of the plane, to a vacant window seat. From there I could see the coastline as it fled north, as if trying to outrun the fancy apartment buildings that ran along its length into the suburbs. I was looking for something specific, trying to follow the converging lines of the avenues as they made their way toward a singular shrine. And then I spotted it, smaller than I imagined, stuck smack in the middle of its urban neighborhood, without the seas of parking lots that ring most of its kind. A dark boomerang of a building surrounding a wedge of jade.

  Wrigley Field.

  The ballpark was why I had come to Chicago. One person’s miracle, Dr. Bob had said, is another person’s disaster. What did that mean, or the strange invocation of a name that seemed still to haunt him? And don’t get me started, he had said, on Don Young. Who the heck was Don Young?

  The story is sad and all too familiar. It is 1969, in the heat of summer, and the Chicago Cubs are solidly ensconced in first place. This is a great Cub team, managed by Leo the Lip, with Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, sweet-swinging Billy Williams, Hall of Famers all, and the legendary Ron Santo, who should be in there with them. On a July night, the Cubs arrive at Shea Stadium, ready to put away the fading Mets. The Cubbies are up three to one in the ninth, when the Met second baseman hits an easy liner to center field. Inexplicably, the Chicago center fielder, a raw rookie, breaks back, allowing the ball to fall in front of him for a double. One out later, the mighty Donn Clendenon hits a shot deep to center. The rookie gets a jump on it and snags it just as he hits the wall, but the blow knocks the ball loose. Another double. Jones and Kranepool do the rest, knocking in three, giving the Mets the game. The next night, Tom Seaver pitches a one-hitter. The Cubs are reeling, the Mets, the eventual World Series champion “Miracle Mets,” are rising, the season has turned.

  And the rookie center fielder’s name? Well, of course it was.

  And who else would remember it but a native, a kid who was living and dying with his hometown team the way only hometown kids can? Once that was figured out, it wasn’t so hard to narrow the location down even further. I could hear the groaning from my backyard, he had said. Which explained why, after I arrived, I rented a car and headed down the parking lot that was I-90, looking for the exit that would take me to the part of Chicago on the North Side known, for obvious reasons, as Wrigleyville.

  There weren’t that many Pfeffers listed in Chicago. The one who lived in Wrigleyville had moved there three years before, after living for years in New Jersey. Of the others, there were a few who knew a Bob Pfeffer here or there of the approximate right age, but none that matched closely enough the description of my dentist.

  “Does Dr. Bob have relatives that you know of?” I had asked Carol Kingsly after my Pfeffer search came up blank.

  “He never mentioned any,” she said. “How does that fit?”

  “It’s a little tight.”

  “That’s good. Tight is good.”

  “It’s not very comfortable.”

  “Honey, it’s a shoe. Try wearing these for a day.” She exhibited her shapely leg, showing off a red patent leather pump with a narrow spike. I got her point. It wasn’t so much that her shoes were uncomfortable, rather that if I wanted to take them off her feet again with my teeth, it was time I changed my footwear.

  “But there are no laces,” I said.

  “Isn’t that wonderful? Buckles are fabulous.”

  “I feel like Buster Brown.” I looked at the salesclerk who had shaken his head with such despair at my thick-soled black wingtips. “What is this again?”

  “It’s a Compton,” he said, “from Crockett & Jones.”

  “Weren’t they the cops on Miami Vice?”

  He sniffed. “It’s a British manufacturer, sir.”

  “How much?”

  “Four hundred forty dollars, and a steal at that.”

  “I suppose it is, for Mr. Crockett. Do you have anything else, maybe something on sale?”

  “Daffy’s is just down the street.”

  “Then how about something just a little less buckle-ish, maybe.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I’ll check the synthetic leathers.”

  “You sure do know how to impress the help,” said Carol after the clerk left to return the Comptons to the back room.

  “What is a Pfeffer anyway?” I said. “It sounds like a smoker’s cough. Pfeffer. Pfeffer.”

  “I think it’s German.”

  “For what, pain?”

  “Don’t be silly. Pfeffer is German for pepper.”

  Driving around Chicago is a little like looking for drinks in Salt Lake City, you pretty much need to be a local to get where you want to go. And it didn’t help that I had the usual rental-car sense of dislocation; how could I find the right street if I couldn’t even find my turn signal? But I had a map and a plan. I left the highway at Belmont, followed Belmont down to Clark, and then Clark up until I eventually arrived at the marker I was looking for. The Cubbies were out of town, so traffic was light and the corner of Addison and Clark was empty except for the massive white structure with its great red sign. WRIGLEY FIELD / HOME OF / CHICAGO CUBS. As if we didn’t know. I looked at the map, and from there it was a breeze. Up a bit, over a bit, just about three blocks west of third base, and there it was.

  It was an old shambling two-story house on a block of old shambling houses, with only narrow walkways between them. But this house was smaller, darker, meaner than the rest. Some of the homes had been freshly painted, some had lovely lawns, new windows, a nice car parked out front, but not this one. It was owned by a Virgil Pepper. It had been owned by Virgil Pepper for forty years. Three Peppers were listed at the address: Virgil, James, and Fran.

  The door was opened by Fran. “What do you want?” she said. She was short and heavy, wearing the sort of well-worn housedress that indicated she wasn’t planning to go out that day. Based on the state of her hair, the paleness of her face, the way she squinted into the sunlight, she wasn’t planning to go out tomorrow either.

  “I called,” I said. “My name is Victor Carl.”

  “You’re that lawyer fellow, right?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “What is it you wanted to talk about again?”

  “I wanted to talk about your brother,” I said. “Your brother Bob.”

  58

  “We thought he was dead,” said Jim Pepper, leaning back on his recliner, wincing as he shifted his position.

  “We hoped he wasn’t,” said Fran.

  “Of course we hoped he wasn’t,” snapped Jim. “What kind of fool wants his little brother dead?”

  “I was just saying,” said Fran.

  Fran sat on a sagging, mud-colored couch. I was sitting stiffly on a stiff fold-up chair. Both Jim and Fran spoke with a slightly southern accent, more a West Virginia twang than the flat prairie accent of Chicago.

  “When was the last time you saw your brother?” I said.

  “Let’s see, now,” said Jim, talking over the television that remained on, a daytime drama with perfect teeth and concerned faces. “He was seventeen, I think. A real hippie-dippie, hair down to his ass, into the drugs and the causes.”

  “Bobby was a hippie?”

  “Sure. Grapes. Something about grapes, I remember, and a Mexican feller he was all up in arms about. Times was tough around here, what with our mother gone and our father away and our father’s sister trying to take care of us. She was a bitter old witch, less than useless, with a mouth on her.” Jim raised his chin to the ceiling, raised his voice to a shout. “Did you hear that? Less than useless.”

  There was a bang from upstairs, as if a wall had been slammed in response.

  “No one eve
r accused Bobby of being quiet,” continued Jim calmly. “One day the two of them, they got into a fight, and things was said. That night he just took his guitar and left. This was like 1975 or so.”

  “It was 1978,” said Fran.

  “Something,” said Jim, shooting his sister an impatient glare. “We got a couple cards, something from Albuquerque, but then nothing.”

  “You would expect that he’d keep in touch,” said Fran. “Visit for Christmas or the anniversary, but no.”

  “We thought he was dead,” said Jim.

  “Why wouldn’t he come back to say hello?” said Fran. “Tell us he’s alive, at least? Daddy would have liked to hear from him.”

  “When did your father die?” I said.

  “He ain’t dead,” said Jim with a snort. “He’s upstairs.” Jim raised his voice again. “Nothing but a useless bag of bones anymore.”

  An angry grunt came from above, and then another, more plaintive.

  “Hold your horses,” shouted out Fran. “We got a guest.”

  Another grunt, and then a bang.

  “You want some tea, mister?” she said, smiling sweetly.

  “That would be nice,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Bobby just disappeared off the face of the earth,” said Fran, without making any effort to rise up and boil some water. “No letters, no calls. But that was always like him, so concerned for the world, without no care for his own family. Couldn’t he at least a done something to let us know he was still alive?”

  I shook my head in agreement, even as I wondered that he had stayed as long as he had.

  However dark and forbidding the Pepper house was outside, the inside was worse. Greasy wallpaper, collapsing furniture, lights dim, shades drawn. Jim was puffy and pale, about fifty-five years old but already a physical wreck, wincing in his chair, fiddling with his cigarette. Wearing sweatpants, a flannel shirt, dingy socks, he lay stiffly on his recliner as if he had been screwed in place. When he died, forget a coffin, just set the chair on full recline and lower them both into the hole. His sister leaned back on the couch, her bare, venous legs crossed so that one pilling slipper was hoisted in the air, bouncing back and forth to some twitchy rhythm. And everything smelled of smoke and cabbage, of mice urine and green beans, of the browning scent of decay and death.