Harry Dolan

by Bad Things Happen

  Kristoll took a long breath, let it out. “I’ll tell you who he was, if you want to know.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Loogan said. “But you need to think about the gun. It’s his gun. There’s probably a way to trace it to him. If you keep it, then it connects you with him.”

  “You’re right, David. I’ll get rid of it.”

  “Do it now. You’ve got it here, don’t you? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s on your ankle.”

  Kristoll let the rake fall to the ground and stepped his right foot forward. The denim of his pant leg rose, revealing in the light of the flashlight first the brown leather of the holster, then the nickel finish of the pistol’s grip. Kristoll got down on one knee and worked the strap, then stood up and drew the pistol out. He handed the holster to Loogan.

  “It’s a small-caliber, obviously,” Kristoll said, weighing the pistol in his hand. “A twenty-two or a thirty-two, I suppose. I ought to know more about guns than I do.”

  Loogan wiped the holster with his shirt and dropped it into the grave.

  “I don’t know if it’s loaded,” Kristoll said. “Or even how to check if it’s loaded. I imagine it is.”

  “There should be a catch on the side, to release the clip,” Loogan said. “But it doesn’t matter whether it’s loaded or not, unless you plan to use it. There’s nobody here but us. Are you going to shoot me?”

  Kristoll’s hand closed around the grip. He aimed the pistol at the ground.

  “I haven’t the energy.”

  “Then wipe it down and toss it in,” Loogan said. “Let’s finish this and get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 5

  “YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT ONE THING, DAVID. HE WAS A THIEF. I WASN’T lying about that.”

  They were driving west in Tom Kristoll’s car: Kristoll behind the wheel, in a fresh T-shirt and fresh jeans; Loogan beside him in a borrowed gray jogging suit. They had left the blue Civic on the street in front of a run-down apartment building.

  “His name was Michael Beccanti,” Kristoll said. “I met him three years ago. ‘Met’ isn’t the right word—we corresponded. He read some things he liked in Gray Streets and wrote in to say so. I wrote a polite reply. Then he sent a story. The spelling was awful and it was scribbled out longhand on a legal pad, but the basic idea was sound—a revenge story, as I recall—a drug dealer kills a man’s wife, and the man stirs up a war between the dealer and one of his rivals. I worked with him on it, and we knocked it into shape. I published it.

  “He wrote two or three others. They needed a lot of work, but he had plenty of time for rewrites. He was in prison. They got him on a string of burglaries. He was rather good, to hear him tell it. He would go in at night when the weather was warm. People would leave their windows open and he would slice through the screens. It didn’t matter to him if someone was home—he was quiet, and he went in and out fast. Then one night someone woke up—a bruiser of a man, drove a garbage truck, I think—and he snuck up on Beccanti with a baseball bat. So then the police had him. He’d never been caught before, so he thought he might get away with probation. But the cops knew all about him. It turns out he always cut the screens the same way—he’d slice them along the top, then along the bottom, then once diagonally, like a Z. So they had a thick file on him. They had him for thirty-one break-ins. They even had a nickname for him. They called him Zorro.”

  Kristoll stared straight ahead as he spoke. Loogan watched him from the passenger seat.

  “He got out of the state prison in Jackson a year ago. Came back to Ann Arbor. He called me, very respectful, asked if we could meet. We had lunch. He talked about how hard it was, adjusting. His parole officer had found him a job stocking shelves somewhere, which he hated. I got the sense he wanted me to help him find something better. I liked him, but I wasn’t going to hire him, and there was no one I felt comfortable recommending him to. He didn’t press it. I saw him after that occasionally. Once he came to the office with a new story. I gave him some money for it, though we never published it.

  “Then tonight he came to the house. He was sorry to bother me at home, he said, but he needed to speak to me about something important. I let him in. It didn’t seem like a risk. We went into the study and he started talking about this woman he’d met. He took a while to come to the point, but the point was he’d gotten her pregnant. Now there were medical bills. He needed money. Five thousand dollars, he said. I don’t know how he came up with that figure. I think he was just trying to see what he could get. I told him I didn’t have five thousand to give him. He smiled at that, as if he was genuinely surprised. Living in a house like mine, on the river? I couldn’t put together five thousand dollars?

  “Well, the truth is the house is mortgaged, and most of the income from Gray Streets goes right back into the business. Laura brings home more from her job at the university than I net from the magazine. I didn’t go into this with him. I just made it clear there wasn’t going to be any five thousand. I was sorry about his situation, but there was nothing I could do for him. He never got agitated, never raised his voice, but he wouldn’t let it go. It could be a loan, he said. I refused. I made some suggestions about public assistance, Medicaid. But by then it had dawned on me that his whole story was probably a lie. He didn’t need money for medical bills. In the end I called him on it. ‘There’s no woman, is there?’ I said. His manner changed then. He laughed.

  “It was a short burst of a laugh, a momentary loss of control. He clamped down on it quickly, and after that he said nothing, as if he had decided the time for talking was over. He was sitting in a chair in the study and I was across from him. He leaned over and started pulling at his pant leg. I saw the leather, the metal. My mind made the relevant connections. Holster. Gun. The bottle was on the table beside me—I had offered him a drink when he came in. Then I was on my feet. He was fumbling around at his ankle, I think the gun might have caught on something. The bottle was in my hand. I drew my arm back, swung it at the side of his head. I thought the bottle would shatter. It didn’t shatter. I held it up in front of me, looking at the label upside down, marveling at it.

  “He was on the floor, on his hands and knees. The gun was under his hand. It wasn’t pointed at me. It didn’t matter. I don’t know if you’ve ever faced anything like that, David. Something primitive takes over. Now, after the fact, I can reflect on how far he might have gone. He wanted to threaten me with the gun. He didn’t want to kill me. Maybe hitting him once was enough, maybe I could have kicked the gun away. I don’t know. I know I hated myself for letting him in the house. I hated him for making me afraid. I wanted him dead.

  “I drew the bottle back again, swung. It was a glancing blow, unsatisfying. The next time I was more careful. I took aim at his temple and swung with my whole body. Felt the bottle connect. He went down. I picked up the gun, stood over him with it. He didn’t move. After a while I nudged him with my foot, then turned him over onto his back. I went through the motions of checking for a pulse, but I knew he was dead.”

  Kristoll fell silent. They had passed through the city and were driving alongside the river north and northwest. Wind stirred the leaves of the branches that hung over the roadside. Loogan leaned his head against the glass of the passenger window and closed his eyes.

  “You’re quiet over there,” Kristoll said after a while. “What are you thinking?”

  Loogan let his eyes come open. “I’ve just been going over your story,” he said. “It’s not bad. If that’s the way you want it, it’s all right with me.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Purely as an exercise, I’ve been trying to figure out how much of it is true. I’d like to think some of it is. I’d like to think you’re at least working your way toward the truth.”

  Kristoll’s thumbnail picked at something on the steering wheel. He wiped dust from the dashboard. “I’d like to be able to tell you the truth, David.”

  “I believe you would,” Loogan said, sitt
ing up straight. “Maybe we should leave it at that. It’s late and we’re both tired. I meant what I said before: You can keep your secrets.”

  With infinite care, Kristoll guided the car through a gradual curve.

  “I appreciate that, David. I wish things were different but . . . I have my reasons.”

  “Of course you do. I don’t need to know what they are. A man gets himself killed in your home, that’s a heavy burden to bear. The details hardly matter. It’s a burden. Even if he had blood and skin under his fingernails, and you don’t have a scratch on you. Even if he struggled with somebody, but it wasn’t you. Even if you didn’t kill him.”

  The next day Loogan woke at two in the afternoon. His back ached as he sat up in bed; his legs ached as he climbed down the stairs; his shoulders ached as he filled a glass with water and reached for the aspirin on the high shelf of a kitchen cabinet.

  Though he had showered the night before, he showered again, and dressed. By three he had driven to the campus of the university. He left his car in a lot where he had no business parking and walked across the quad. The sun was out. He sat on a bench within view of Angell Hall. Students went by on the sidewalk, and a few of them gathered and passed around a pack of cigarettes. At twenty after three, Laura Kristoll came down the steps of Angell Hall. There were two students with her: a girl with long auburn hair and a boy with a black mustache and goatee and a shaved head. Loogan recognized them from parties at the house on the Huron River.

  Loogan rose from the bench and Laura spotted him. She said something to the students and they went on across the quad without her. The girl with auburn hair looked back at Loogan and then leaned in to whisper something to the boy with the shaved head.

  Laura Kristoll wore a long woolen coat and a silk scarf. Her blond hair fell over the silk. Loogan stood by the bench and let her come to him.

  “Hello, David,” she said. “I understand you and Tom hit the town last night.”

  “We did.”

  “A movie and a drink,” she said. “I suspect it was more drink than movie. Tom slept like a bear this morning.”

  “Me too.”

  “You too. But not like a bear. You slept beautifully, I’m sure. And then you woke up and came here.” It was a statement, but her eyes made it a question.

  “I needed to see you,” Loogan said in a low voice. “I hope it’s not . . . indiscreet.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’re always discreet.”

  “I need . . . a few minutes of your time.” He made his tone mischievous. “Can we go to your office?”

  “You’re sweet, David. But I have a committee meeting.”

  “You can be late. Let’s go to your office. I need to see you.”

  She wavered for a moment, then turned without a word and went back up the steps of Angell Hall. He followed her to her office on the second floor. She locked the door and walked casually to the window to close the blinds. Slipped out of her coat and threw it on a chair.

  Then she spun around and pressed herself against him. He kissed her, fiercely: her mouth, her neck. He tore away the silk scarf; his fingers worked the buttons of her blouse. He turned her around and pulled the tails of the blouse out of her skirt. His right hand ran over her stomach, his left stroked her neck.

  She let out a long breath. “I really don’t have time, David. I’ll be missed.”

  “I just need to see you,” he said. “Let me see you and then you can go.”

  He pulled the blouse down along her arms and off. Unhooked her bra in front and drew it off the same way. He raised her arms so they were parallel to the floor, and with his index fingers he traced two lines from her wrists to her shoulder blades, then a single line down the center of her back. He turned her around to face him and traced another line over the freckles at the base of her neck, down between her small breasts.

  “This is what I wanted,” he said.

  She leaned against the edge of her desk. Her blue eyes locked on his.

  “You’re perfect,” he said. “Your skin is flawless.”

  She reached up to grip the collar of his coat and pulled him close. He felt her lips on his neck, heard her whisper a single word: “Dangerous.”

  A week went by before Loogan saw Tom Kristoll again. It happened in the evening. Loogan had spent the afternoon downtown watching a pair of foreign films whose plots he would have been hard-pressed to describe. The day before, he had driven to Toledo to view an exhibit on the history of glassmaking. In the days before that, he had attended a play in Chicago and a concert in Detroit.

  Now he sat in the swing on the porch of his rented house watching rain fall from a cool gray sky. He had a pen in his hand and a notebook open on his knee. He was jotting notes on the subject that had occupied his thoughts in Toledo and Chicago and Detroit.

  Someone Tom Kristoll identifies as Michael Beccanti was killed on the night of October seventh in the study of Tom’s house on the Huron River.

  The dead man had a pistol strapped to his ankle—why?

  He had traces of blood and skin under his nails, indicating a struggle with his killer. Most likely he would have scratched his killer on the face, neck, arms, or hands. Tom has no scratches in any of these places.

  Laura Kristoll has no scratches anywhere on her body. It seems unlikely, though not impossible, that she would have the strength required to kill a man with a bottle of Scotch.

  If neither Tom nor Laura killed Beccanti, then he was killed by someone else. That person left after the killing. He didn’t stick around to help dispose of the body—why?

  Tom may be lying about the dead man’s identity. It may not be Michael Beccanti. There may be no such person as Michael Beccanti.

  Rain fell on the railing of the porch, on the toes of Loogan’s shoes.

  The dead man, whoever he was, was killed in the Kristoll house. The killer was most likely acquainted with Tom and Laura Kristoll.

  Loogan paused. Who did he know that was acquainted with Tom and Laura? There were interns and writers from Gray Streets. There were a few friends he had met at parties over the summer. There would be parents, brothers, sisters—but he had never met them.

  He would stick with what he knew. He wrote the heading WRITERS and listed several whose stories he had edited. None of them lived in the area. But there were two local writers he had met at the Kristoll house: A tall man with a ridiculous name—Nathan Hideaway. A woman—Bridget something—who wrote books about a lady detective and a dog. He added them to the list. Under another heading—INTERNS—he wrote: The girl with the auburn hair—Valerie? The boy with the goatee and the shaved head. I really ought to learn people’s names.

  At the bottom of the page he added: I know next to nothing about Tom and Laura Kristoll.

  Loogan looked up and saw a car parked at the curb—Tom Kristoll’s Ford. Kristoll, raincoated and fedoraed, jogged up the walk and climbed the steps. He had a package under his arm: rectangular and thin and wrapped in brown paper. “What are you doing?” he said.

  Loogan closed the notebook and laid it on the seat of the swing. “Making notes for a story I’ll never write.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Kristoll said. “If you’ve got an idea, you ought to write it up. If it’s giving you trouble, I could have a look.”

  “It’s too soon, Tom,” Loogan said, rising. “Why don’t we go in?”

  “I can’t stay long,” Kristoll said. He bowed his head and beads of rain rolled down the brim of the fedora. “I never thanked you properly for your help the other night,” he said. “I thought a gift would be in order. Any other time, I would have gone with a bottle of Scotch. But I knew that wouldn’t do here. The symbolism was all wrong. So I went with this instead.”

  He handed the package to Loogan. The brown paper was dotted with rain. Loogan tore through it and underneath was a framed photograph—shards of broken glass, and flower petals, and bits of paper in the shape of leaves. The photograph Laura had bought on
the day of their visit to the gallery.

  “Laura picked it out,” Kristoll said. “I told her I wanted to get you something. She didn’t know the reason, of course, but she thought you’d like this. I don’t know where you’ll put it. It’s not big enough to go over the fireplace, I suppose. Maybe in your office. Do you like it?”

  “It’s marvelous,” Loogan said.

  Chapter 6

  HE HEARD FROM KRISTOLL AGAIN THE FOLLOWING WEEK, ON FRIDAY afternoon. He was lying on his stomach on the living-room carpet, the pages of a manuscript spread before him. He was stuck on a line of dialogue—he had written seven variations on a yellow legal pad when the phone rang. Distracted, he picked it up on the fifth ring.

  “I thought you weren’t going to answer,” Kristoll said. “What are you up to?”

  “Trying to figure out what a blackmailer would say to a money-launderer,” said Loogan.

  “I see. . . . Is this the new story?”

  “What new story?”

  “The one you were making notes on the other day.”

  “No. It’s someone else’s story. That’s what I do. Edit other people’s stories.”

  “Hell, David, you ought to be working on something of your own.”

  “As it happens, someone’s paying me to do this.”

  “That could change,” Kristoll said. “Maybe I should fire you.”

  “Is that why you called? To fire me?”

  “No, but maybe it’s the best thing I could do for you. What are you doing later?”

  “Depends on whether I’m fired. What are you doing?”

  There was a delay before Kristoll answered, and when he did his tone was thoughtful.