by David Daniel
“I’ve been looking forward to it.”
Her enthusiasm made a tentative return. She hugged me and softly fingered the knot on the back of my head. She clicked her tongue. “Do you want anything for that?”
“A drink would be a step in the right direction.”
“Okay. I was just about to light the charcoal. Why don’t you come out back with me, and you just sit while I fix us one.”
“I’m not an invalid. What can I do to help?”
But she was insistent, so on the little backyard patio, with wind chimes tinkling softly and plants still blooming in their border beds, I sat and let her be domestic. To lighten the mood, I told her about seeing a Southeast Asian fisherman land a huge carp from the Concord River earlier that day. “Maybe somewhere in the city right now,” I said, “there’s a family of seven sitting around that big old fish, their mouths watering.”
There were clay pots with mint and basil growing in them, and Phoebe plucked a few leaves and tore them and put into the marinade, the way I’d seen chefs do on television. I thought about the little herb garden in Flora Nuñez’s apartment, about people cooking for other people whom they cared about. It seemed such a basic form of affection, and when Phoebe was finished, I pulled her onto my lap. “A spontaneous gesture,” she cooed. “Todd was a plan-way-ahead guy. I sometimes thought he had every move on a little list in his pocket.”
I didn’t confess to the dark thought that had prompted my hug. I kissed her and she kissed me back. She squirmed around so she was sitting facing me, her legs straddling my hips. Our lips pressed hard against each other’s and soon our breath came fast. I slid my hands up her back and sides, felt her nipples rise hard to my fingertips through the fabric of her bra, and suddenly I knew—as she had to know, too—that tonight would be the night when we would make love for the first time. Not here, not now; there’d be drinks first, and dinner, and intimate unhurried conversation—but a deal had been struck. It was all unspoken, but we knew.
We drew ourselves apart, and Phoebe handed me the chilled Louis Jadot. I uncorked it and made ready to pour.
“Wait. You have to let it breathe.”
“Couldn’t we just give it mouth-to-mouth?”
“It won’t take long.”
We went inside, and she took out a jug wine she had in the refrigerator, already open, and poured us each a glass of that. We settled on a couch on her screened porch and watched the news. The case (which the media were calling the “Carnival Murder,” or, in one of the more colorful Boston papers, the “Carny Slay,” happy to turn the verb to a noun) got another mention; they were keeping it alive. The phone rang, and Phoebe went into another room to get it. I heard her make some brief conversation, and after a moment she came back in. “Kathy, from work. You met her. Just checking in.”
On the national news, Hurricane Gus was the story, having opted on a run back at the Bahamas. The broadcast showed fishing boats bashed to matchwood against a jetty, a coastal village being leveled. The days of kidding about storm names and indecision were over. We watched the footage of collapse and fragmentation, the ground of people’s lives being swept away. “Dear God,” Phoebe murmured several times, and I knew what she meant. The news anchors tried for a light counternote at the end of the broadcast with a story about early snow in Montana and pictures of the first snowman of the season. It was a good try.
We went out on the patio again. The sun had set, leaving only lingering splashes of gold on the tall pines at the back of the small yard, moving now with a cooling breeze. I held my hands above the grill, savoring the warmth. As Phoebe got ready to put the Rock hens on, her expression was troubled. “What?” I said.
“I think you should get out of this.”
“‘This’ meaning … ?”
“It’s more complicated than what you took on. And dangerous. Can’t you call someone and say you’re resigning?” Color had risen in two patches on her cheeks, like daubs of rouge.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, taking her hands. “Was it your friend’s call? The newscast?”
“This is no good, Alex. A policeman? Maybe others? Do you have any idea what could happen? What if they come after you?”
“I don’t think that’s likely.” I thought about the guy yelling at me from the car on Merrimack Street. Random harassment was more likely.
“But it’s possible. Or something else that’s bad. Don’t ask me what. I don’t know” Her voice was taking on an edgier, more manic note. “I just know that I like my drama on TV, where it’s safe, and I can turn it off when I want to. I don’t want it in my life.”
I liked it at a distance, too, but it had this bad habit of not staying there. I picked up trouble like gum on my shoe, and it tended to stick.
“I’m serious, Alex. I think you’re being blind about this.” She gripped my hands and fixed me with a soft, questing gaze. “Is a woman still the way to a man’s heart?”
“She can be.”
“How about to his senses? To reason? Darling, do you understand what could happen?”
I could play stupid; it never came hard to me, but this wasn’t the time for it. I said, “Not all of it, no. Some, though.”
She was looking steadily at me, her green eyes bright and concerned and slightly desperate. “Tell me.”
I glanced at the bottle of wine and had to restrain myself from reaching and pouring our glasses full and raising mine in toast to clink against hers and to hell with the wine breathing, let’s us breathe, let’s dance, let’s …
I said, “If I go for the cops, I’m challenging the system. It can be done, has to be sometimes, but usually as part of long-term investigations, blue ribbon commissions, with lots of Beacon Hill backbone and federal probes and more time than anyone’s got. This is too uncertain. If I stick with Sonders and the carnival”—assuming I stayed healthy, I thought but didn’t say—“there’ll be people in the city who’ll never forget it. Influential folks, some of them. They’ll call it betrayal.”
Her look stayed worried, but at least I was talking some sense. “So let the carnival guy find someone other than you,” she said, an undisguised plea in her tone. “Couldn’t you do that?”
“Phoebe. Who? No one’s lining up to get in on this.”
“There must be somebody that … who’s …” She drew a breath and let it out in a gust.
“Dumb enough?”
“Idealistic enough.”
“Jimmy Stewart is dead.”
“Just stop, then. Resign!” Her abruptly chopping hand hit a wineglass and knocked it onto the patio, where it broke. She ignored it. “You’ve got that in your contract, don’t you? That you can terminate a client?” I picked up the biggest piece of broken glass and set it on the table. “Aren’t you afraid?” she went on.
“A little,” I admitted.
“I am. I’m really afraid.”
I reached for her, but she stepped back. “Talk to me,” I said.
“No, I just did. It didn’t work.”
I lowered my arms. I paced a little. A shard of glass crunched under my shoe, and I stopped. “I can see it play out. Pepper comes to trial, with evidence and testimony from you-know-which cops. He’ll be tagged for the murder so fast his bunk will still be warm when he gets back to jail. Except he won’t be in county. Even if Meecham can get the charge reduced, he’ll be on the yard at Walpole. He’ll do fifteen to twenty hard.”
“Maybe he is guilty.” She shook her hands dramatically. “Have you forgotten that?”
I hadn’t. It was the thing I couldn’t entirely let go of.
“Isn’t that card in the deck somewhere?” she asked.
“It’s there.”
“Okay. You were a cop. Did you often arrest a wrong person?”
“Almost never,” I admitted. But all at once I was thinking of the man on the junkyard toilet, and the stream of bubbles rising in the mouth of the Harlem River.
“Suppose he did do it, and you risk all this and the v
erdict comes out the same? If you don’t quit, how’s that going to affect your work? You’re your own boss, aren’t you? You don’t owe those carnival people anything you haven’t already given them. They’ll forget.”
She was probably right; people do forget—but the point was, I wouldn’t. If I walked, I’d have to live with their faces—Pop and Nicole, Moses Maxwell, Penny, Tito, Red Fogarty—and I’d always know that when …
I let the thoughts go. “Oh, hell’s bells. I’ll deal with all this later. Let’s eat.”
She lifted her shoulders in a forlorn shrug. “I don’t have any appetite.”
Suddenly I didn’t, either. “Some wine, then.” I picked up the bottle. It was plenty cold. “It’s supposed to have a French finish, not the kind of thing you get hammered on, but it’s a start. You like Ben Franklin—didn’t he compile a long list of synonyms for getting drunk? Let’s add a few. The hell with all this. Let’s put a package on, let’s get snookered, let’s paint the town.”
Phoebe shook her head slowly. “I wish I could. I’m not in the mood.” I set the bottle back. I took her hands. They felt warm. She looked me in the eye. “I’ve been to all those singles events, the mixers and the soirees at the art museum … I told you all that. And do you know what single people think about most?”
“Is it a three-letter word that is often mistaken for a four-letter word?”
“Wait. When you and I went out that first time, you told me you thought my name was a happy one.”
“Phoebe. It is.”
“Names are just names. I have my dark moods, too; believe me. But being on my own these past few years … I’ve come to know what it is that most of the single people I’ve met really think about deep down. They don’t want to die alone. How would that work for us? Just supposing we got together? Would I end up alone anyhow? A widow?”
“Those all sound rhetorical.”
“When I first met you, you came by the office, dressed in a nice suit, and I thought your job was sitting at a desk, like most people, and filling out your share of paper, moving it around, making phone calls.”
“I do all of that.”
“But it doesn’t end there,” she said with gentle insistence. “You’ve also got that scar on your leg you told me about, and the lump on your head today.”
“I imagine most people have got scars. They come from living.”
Smiling wanly, she shook her head, and I shut up. “I’m no different than those other people I mentioned. I don’t want to be alone, either. But if I have to, I’d rather stay alone than go through that loss again. I think you need to decide, and then act. When you do, and if all of this craziness is behind us, call me. We’ll have a nice time together.”
As though she were sealing a bargain, she kissed me gently on the mouth and then turned and went quickly into the house.
35
A few dry leaves skittered across the road in my headlights, urged by the rising wind, as I drove back across the city. Cold was coming, but I left my window open, letting the air blow in on me. With some vague notion of making up for the missed meal with simple fare at home, I stopped at a supermarket and bought a bag of provisions, though I wasn’t very hungry. I put the bag in the trunk and crossed the river and went out the VFW, my mind finding focus on nothing in particular. I twitched the radio on, then twitched it off again. As I passed Regatta Field, I noticed several vehicles in the field, ringed in a semicircle, facing inward, their headlights aimed in a converging V and illuminating a group of people. That was odd; the carnival crew was still holed up at the Venice as far as I knew. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone at the fairgrounds. Curious, I parked along the street and got out. For a moment, I stood there, uncertain, then I unlocked my trunk and got my .38 out of the hidden compartment by the wheel well. I snapped the holster onto my belt. As I started across the big field, an old plastic bag came whipping along, wrapped around my ankle for a moment, then danced on past. The air had a damp ash smell from the burnt-out haunted house.
When I got to where I could make out details, though no one had seen me yet, I realized the group consisted of ten or twelve people. Some had their backs to the headlights, and others stood slightly farther away, so I couldn’t make out any faces; they were just shapes and shadows in the night—a shaved head here, a baseball cap there. Carnival people, gathered for an informal meeting?
Then, over the sigh of wind, a voice said, “Since you birds shut down the show, we figured we’d come out and get our own show. Lucky we found you.”
My hackles rose. I edged closer, and that’s when I saw that the two people facing the light were Moses Maxwell and Nicole. Moses was wearing his porkpie hat, and his face was shiny with sweat. The others, whoever they were, had the two surrounded.
“Hey, you’re a pinhead, aren’t you, girl?” the man who had spoken before said. He was a tall, lanky party with a beak that could etch glass.
“There’s no call for that,” Moses said. “No call for you to be here. Let’s just let it alone, shall we, gentlemen? And all go home peaceably.” He said it in his calm way, but I heard a thread of worry in his voice.
“Say what, dude?” the tall man said. “And what would be your role?”
“Maybe he’s the bearded lady. Ain’t you the bearded lady?” said another, a shaved-head, dressed in shorts and a football jersey with the inevitable number 69.
“Quit it, you!” Nicole said. “Go away.”
Hoots of laughter. “Ooohhh … ‘Quit it, you,’” Shaved Head mocked. He gripped her arm and gave her a shake.
“Stop it!” Nicole cried. There was an ice-skim of hysteria on her voice.
I looked around, hoping someone else was nearby to even the numbers a little, but there were only the scattered trailers and the shutdown rides. Something had brought Nicole and Moses here, but I didn’t waste time trying to figure out what it had been. I needed an angle, something more inspired than simply turning up and saying, “Hi, guys.”
Alongside Ray Embry’s trailer, I noticed one of the torches that he used for his juggling stuffed in an open can, and it gave me an idea. One sniff of the wick told me there was still kerosene in it. I hoped it would be enough. Holding the unlit torch, I walked over to the ring of headlights. At my approach, heads turned. Most of the strangers appeared to be in their twenties, a few slightly older. The tall party looked forty. I stepped just to the edge of the light, and with my free hand I drew my gun. It took a few seconds for the effect to register, then I saw people stiffen.
“Mr. Rasmussen!” cried Nicole.
“What the fu—” began the tall guy.
I held the torch wick down, put the gun barrel next to it, aimed at the ground. If my idea flopped, it was going to be hard to find another entrance line. I squeezed the trigger.
People jumped at the explosion. The snout of flame sparked the torch, which instantly caught fire. The effect was riveting. No one said a word. Hiding my own amazement, I lowered my gun, raised the torch, and walked into the center of the lighted ring.
“You want to play with fire?” I swung the torch in a half circle. In the after-silence of the gunshot, the flames made a suitably dramatic roar. I swung it back again, and people edged away, gawking at me as if I were some madman, or a wraith of vengeance. Even Moses Maxwell and Nicole seemed suddenly not quite sure what to make of me.
“You’re shit-crazy, dude,” the tall one said. He had on a green surgical smock and a pair of baggy canvas pants.
“Stick around and see how crazy. I just pushed nine-one-one.”
Several of them traded worried looks, but the tall guy just stared. “We gonna shit our pants over one guy? I think he’s bluffing.”
I noticed that the torch flame had dwindled slightly and had given up its throaty sound. I shook it a bit, for effect.
“We could fuckin’ take you down right now,” the tall guy said.
I brought the .38 up. My finger was well away from the trigger, but he wouldn’t know that.
“Grin big, brother,” I said.
“Come on,” said one of the others, “let’s split.”
The leader had other words for me, but no one seemed ready to back him up. After a few more seconds of standoff, even he must’ve agreed that discretion was the better part of valor. They got into the cars and gunned off across the field, headlights stabbing the dark, dust rising in their wake. I holstered the .38.
“Good to see you, Mr. Rasmussen,” Moses said, using his hat to fan himself. “And that’s a fact.”
I held the torch out to the side, so we could see one another more clearly in its florid light. “Sorry for the cheesy special effects. Are you two okay?”
Nicole was hugging herself, shivering. Emotions were coming and going on her face like the restless flicker and shadow of the torchlight. “They had me really scared. We didn’t hurt them. Why did they do that?”
There was a note of hysteria in her voice, but she seemed to be calming down. Moses put a comforting arm around her. “For some folks it seems to be a labor walking upright all the time. They want to get down on all fours sometimes and howl. Tomorrow, they’ll be sobered up and maybe feel ashamed. They ought to, anyway.” He sent me a look. “You suppose they the ones burnt up the trailer?”
I said they could be, though something told me they had been a ragtag group. I could imagine them parked in a local juice mill, corking up a head of steam, until finally someone mentioned the carnies, and they’d tumbled out into cars and come looking for mischief. I snuffed the torch and set it back in the can where I’d found it, although the kerosene smell stayed on me like a taint.
“That true about you calling the police?” Moses asked.
“A bluff. Though I doubt any of that crew is going to report it.”
“Not till they change their shorts, leastways.” Moses chuckled. “Cats were some spooked for a while there.”
“They weren’t the only ones,” Nicole said.
I didn’t doubt that they’d be back; probably not tonight, and maybe not the same ones, but when people did come again it would be with bigger numbers and more determination. I detected a crusade growing in the city, a need to repulse the invaders, fanned by lamebrain candidates trolling for votes and at least one opinion columnist willing to exploit the issue. “What are you two doing here?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be at the hotel?”
