Blinded

by Stephen White

  “That’s when you should’ve left, huh?”

  “Would have been better, yeah. But I didn’t, I wasn’t ready to walk yet. So I started yelling all over again. He made a fist, showed it to me-shook it at me, really-and came at me again.”

  “You shot him?”

  “You already know this story?”

  “No. But I know if you just beat the crap out of him, you’d still have your pension, and you wouldn’t be living in Orange County.”

  “I shot him.”

  “Nuts?”

  “Foot. Nuts was tempting, though. Real tempting. Think I might’ve gotten time for shooting him in the nuts.”

  “He’s still on the bench?”

  “Of course.” She sighed, the exhale carrying a full cargo of cynicism. “He was indifferent to hurting me, Sam. He didn’t care. About the affair, about the slaps, about the pension. None of it. He didn’t care.”

  “How’s his foot?”

  She smiled just a tiny bit. “He doesn’t play squash anymore.”

  Across the way a car pulled to a stop in front of the Malone house. An SUV, one of those little stubby Lexus SUVs that were scampering all over Boulder like Japanese roaches. I hated them less than I hated the really big ones, the Fords and the Cadillacs and the Lincolns, but I hated them nonetheless.

  No particular reason. I just did. Actually, it was one of the few things that my friend Alan and I agreed upon.

  “I bet that’s Artie.”

  “Who’s Artie?”

  “The brother-in-law I told you about. He’s an asshole.”

  Carmen perked up. “Really?”

  “Not your kind of asshole, I’m afraid. No bona fides, and I suspect that Artie’s the kind of asshole who doesn’t like his women to be packing heat.”

  She sat back again. “Ahhh. One of those.”

  While we chatted, I was checking the parade of clowns climbing out of the little silver Lexus. Artie had been driving, no surprise there. A slightly older, severely less perky version of Holly climbed out of the front passenger seat, and three way-too-well-behaved, way-too-well-dressed children exited the rear.

  Carmen said, “No Sterling in that bunch.”

  “Afraid not. We wait.” I touched her hand. “Sorry about San Jose.”

  “Yeah.”

  Twenty minutes later I said, “Shit.”

  We’d been silent the whole time, and Carmen was startled by my exclamation.

  “What?” she asked. She was staring out the windshield as though she figured she’d missed something important at the Malone house.

  “I forgot to turn my phone back on. Damn.” I hit the little on button, and the phone came alive and immediately started probing the atmosphere for a cell tower to mate with. Once the slutty little thing had finished getting intimate with some new anonymous electronic partner, I checked my voicemail.

  The first message was from Simon.

  “Hey, Carmen,” I said. “Give me a minute? I want to call my kid.”

  “Sure, be good to stretch my legs. I’ll walk around the block again, see what I can see.”

  Simon and I talked football and relatives and hockey and snowmobiles-that part was new for us; he’d never ridden one before this trip-for about three minutes, which was about all the conversation he could ever manage on the phone. But the contact with him eased something inside me that desperately needed easing. When he was saying his version of good-bye, he asked if I was going to be at his grandpa’s in time for turkey, and the question almost sliced me in two. In my heart I felt that awful sucking thing you hear when the cranberry sauce is sliding reluctantly out of the can.

  To distract myself from the reality of the fact that I was in South Bend and Simon was up in Minnesota, I went back to my cell phone and scrolled through the other messages.

  Lucy, just wishing me a happy Thanksgiving.

  Yeah, you too.

  And Gibbs. Sounding a little frantic, letting me know she was in Vail. I tried her back but didn’t get an answer.

  No call from Alan. That surprised me.

  Carmen climbed back in the car. She was shivering just a little. She should have worn her coat.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Nothing. No Sterling, no Brian.”

  I said, “Gibbs called, left me a message. She’s anxious. One of us should be watching her, you know.”

  I expected Carmen to disagree with me. She didn’t. “Probably. She’s as much at risk as Holly is, but she wasn’t as cooperative about being watched as Holly is. Gibbs should be in Safe House.”

  “Yeah, she should. Maybe Holly should be, too.” I liked that idea. Hell, if we could talk Holly into going to South Bend’s version of Safe House, I could drop off Carmen at O’Hare and maybe-just maybe-get to Minnesota before Simon crawled into bed. I could read him a Bialosky or two, and he could explain to me what he found so fetching about that little bear.

  But Holly wasn’t about to go to Safe House. Part of me knew that a part of Holly was enjoying the current situation. Where sex was concerned, she was a roller-coaster, bungee-jumping freak. In this situation there was more than enough danger to get her sexual heart really pumping. Add in a heavy dose of anticipation-it was clear that anticipation stirred something in her that had been dormant in me for a long, long time-and for her this could be almost as big a rush as sneaking into the pope’s bed in the Vatican.

  Carmen and I cooling our heels out here on the curb meant that there were strangers watching Holly’s every move and, even better for her, the possibility of judgmental Artie walking around any corner. Yep, the setup was almost as good as that afternoon in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

  All that, and a turkey in the oven, too.

  No Native Americans. No Pilgrims. But nonetheless, for Holly it had the makings of a Thanksgiving to remember.

  The dashboard clock informed me that it was exactly three minutes after four o’clock.

  Why was that important? Sometime in the last couple of hours, a world or two away from South Bend, Mary Ellen Wolf had carved a long slender knife through the crisp skin on the outside of a beautiful Georgia turducken. After a little downward pressure-it would take just a little because after eighteen hours in a slow oven those nested birds would be as tender as a grandmother’s whisper-the sequential beauty would be revealed. Turkey, duck, chicken, followed by some dark andouille, and then all the glorious components of oyster stuffing.

  There are times in life when you just know that the train has left the station without you and that it’s not coming back around, ever. A county fair and a girl you could have kissed. A job and a promotion you might have had. Some friends in a beat-up old car and a trip you might have taken.

  Twins, and a meal you might have eaten.

  The Wolf sisters and that turducken were going to haunt me for a while. I was 110 percent sure about that.

  A foot away from me Carmen was doing something with her fingernails and a sharp wooden stick. Sherry did the same thing occasionally, but Sherry doing it never captured much of my attention. Carmen doing it did. She distracted me even more when she started humming the melody of one of those tunes she’d sung the night before at bedtime in the Days Inn.

  FIFTY-NINE

  ALAN

  While the turkey was resting on the cutting board prior to carving, Lauren asked me if I’d spoken with Jon Younger.

  “Maybe after dinner,” I said. “But I’m still not convinced this can’t wait until Monday.”

  She kissed me. “Call him. Please.”

  Dinner? The turkey was dry, the gravy a little salty, and the cranberries overcooked, but the caramelized Brussels sprouts were perfection, and the merlot that Lauren had picked was as supple as a young dancer. Jonas, our neighbor Adrienne’s son, and his nanny joined us for the meal because Adrienne was taking call at the hospital. Grace made it through the entire affair without a meltdown, and Lauren fought her steroid malaise with a determination that was inspiring.

&nb
sp; The dogs slept like dogs.

  It was a pretty damn good Thanksgiving.

  Lauren and I cleaned up the kitchen together. I grabbed my pager off my hip a moment after I started the dishwasher and promptly excused myself to make a couple of phone calls. Five minutes later I tracked Lauren down at the pool table in time to watch her rerack the balls and begin to fondle the white cue ball in a way that made me just the slightest bit jealous.

  I said, “Our guests are gone?”

  She nodded. “Jonas was approaching a cliff at high speed. We thought he should have a mattress under him when he went over it.”

  I pointed at my pager and said, “Emergency, unfortunately. I have to go into the office for a couple of hours.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah?”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  She didn’t believe me.

  She leaned over the table and with a single powerful stroke turned the triangle of pool balls into a physics lesson in vectors.

  I didn’t make the third phone call, the crucial phone call, until I was in my car on the way downtown to my office.

  “Jim? Alan Gregory.”

  “Alan. This is a surprise.”

  “Are you out somewhere, Jim? Am I disturbing your dinner?” The truth was that I didn’t really care whether I was intruding, but feigning politeness was called for, and I was feigning politeness.

  “I’m with some friends. We just finished. What’s up?”

  “It’s about the problem with… your client’s secrets. I have some information that you should know.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’m not comfortable going into it on the phone. Could you drop by my office later on? Maybe five o’clock?”

  “On Thanksgiving? This is necessary?”

  “I think you should know what’s going on. Some of what I want to talk with you about other people already know, so I’d like to bring you up to speed as soon as possible in case some of it becomes public, Jim.”

  “Really. Five o’clock?”

  “I’m heading into the office now, and I have an emergency-something with another patient-that I need to take care of first. She and I should be done by five at the latest.”

  “See you then,” he said.

  When I arrived in downtown Boulder, I detoured into the parking lot of one of the banks on Walnut near Fourteenth and withdrew the maximum amount that was permitted from an ATM. My plan required cash. Quite a bit of it, actually.

  A few blocks farther west I pulled down the driveway of the building that held my office. She was waiting for me on the steps that led up to the French doors at the rear of the building.

  “You got the money?”

  I flashed the thick pile of twenties.

  “Let’s go, then, get this done. They’re holding dessert until I get back. My sister makes a sweet potato pie that…”

  Tayisha’s words just faded into the night.

  “Shouldn’t take long?” I asked.

  “Nope.” She smiled at me in a way that made her sparkling white teeth jump out of the darkness. “My boss never hears about this, right?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Then we’re on. Where’s my baby?”

  SIXTY

  SAM

  Only one other house on Holly Malone’s block seemed to be having people over for the holiday celebration. As far as Thanksgiving was concerned, this was a neighborhood of guests, not hosts.

  Carmen and I took turns dozing off for the next couple of hours. On one of my turns awake I walked around the block, not so much because I expected to find anything going on as because everybody had been telling me that it was good for my heart to get my pulse up every once in a while.

  I was beginning to suspect that Carmen was good for my heart, too, though the fact that she was sleeping right beside me in the car was distracting me in ways that left me uneasy. The minutes passed especially slowly as she napped, but it was okay. I spent a portion of the silent hours lost in a familiar cop reverie about evil, an evil that I felt was hovering over that South Bend neighborhood like a dark cloud in still winds.

  Somewhere around six o’clock Carmen and I got confused about whose turn it was to nap. The second I opened my eyes I knew something didn’t feel exactly right. It took me longer than it should have taken to realize that she, too, was snoozing.

  “Activity,” I said.

  Carmen’s eyes popped open. “What, what?”

  “Activity.”

  The activity was the arrival of a minivan, an older Plymouth that had those tacky fake wood panels on the sides. It hadn’t been washed since water was invented. The minivan had parked right behind the little Lexus, so our view of the ensuing disembarkation was partially obscured. Still, I could tell that a small crowd was forming on the sidewalk.

  “The other sister,” I said.

  With some wonder in her voice, Carmen said, “My, she’s fertile. Look at the size of…”

  I counted five kids congregating on the sidewalk, but anyone who was shorter than three feet or so in height probably remained invisible to me because of the angle and the intervening Lexus.

  “Two adults?” I asked.

  Carmen said, “Yes. One mom and one dad. One, two… five kids. Or six? What do you get?”

  I counted again. “I get six. How old is Holly’s sister? She tell you that when you talked to her yesterday?”

  “If this is the one I think, she’s five years older than Holly. Jeez, Sam, think-that poor woman has been pregnant almost every other day of her life since her eighteenth birthday.”

  The members of Holly’s oldest sister’s brood were dressed like kids, in sharp distinction to Artie’s offspring, who were dressed as though they expected a relative to die during dinner and Artie wanted to be certain they were prepared to attend an immediate funeral.

  The newly arrived posse broke ranks as they moved toward Holly’s front door. Running. Laughter. Teasing.

  “Wait,” Carmen said. “I get three adults now.”

  “Yep, me too. The blonde is Holly’s sister?”

  “I guess,” Carmen replied. “Who’s the other one, then, the woman with the dark hair?”

  I didn’t answer. Holly answered the door, and the passel of nieces and nephews funneled inside, followed by the blond woman and then the rotund brother-in-law with the big smile. Everybody got either a hug or a kiss or both. The woman with the dark hair stood patiently on that classic Craftsman-style porch holding a covered dish, waiting for her turn to arrive. Once her relatives were safely inside the house, Holly stepped out to speak with the woman. Holly’s head was tilted to one side the whole time.

  After listening for about thirty seconds, Holly took the woman by the elbow and guided her farther from the door. They talked for another minute or so, their faces only a foot apart.

  “A friend? Neighbor?” Carmen conjectured.

  “Maybe.” I didn’t want to come to any conclusions at that point. I wanted to observe.

  The covered dish finally changed hands, some final words were spoken, and the woman stepped down from the porch without a hug or kiss from Holly. She walked down the sidewalk away from the house, which was also away from me and Carmen. Holly hesitated a second at the door before she stepped back into the house. Had she looked our way before she went inside? I wasn’t sure.

  I figured she figured I was close by.

  I checked my cell phone to make sure it was on. It was.

  “Want me to follow her?” Carmen asked.

  She was talking about the covered dish lady. That didn’t surprise me. She was asking me what I wanted her to do. That did. “Don’t think so. You’re probably right. Just a neighbor.”

  Carmen said, “I’m getting hungry. You?”

  “Always. You think maybe we could get Holly to bring us a plate? Her turkey will come out of the oven soon. I bet they end up eating around seven, maybe a little after.”

  She reached into her purse and offered me
an energy bar. “You might get a plate, Sam. Not me.”

  I shocked myself; I took the bar. “If I get any turkey and stuffing, I’ll share,” I said. “Promise.”

  Six forty-five. Night had arrived under slate gray skies.

  I said, “Turkey’s coming out of the oven right about now. I’m going to do a stroll around the block again, see if I can work up an appetite.”

  It had been a joke, but Carmen missed it. She put a hand on my arm. “We wasting our time?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  “How long can we last? Just the two of us, I mean? Tomorrow morning? What then?”

  I’d thought about that, too. “I’m hoping something new develops with the investigation, something we can use to get the local police willing to help keep an eye on Holly. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll go talk to Holly again, see if I can get her to go stay with one of her sisters in Chicago for the weekend.”

  “I know which sister I’d choose.”

  “Yeah. Artie doesn’t seem likely to have a dominant good-host gene, does he?”

  “I’m sorry about your holiday, Sam.”

  “Company’s good, Carmen. That helps.”

  She didn’t miss that I said that. Her hand was still on my arm. The pressure changed. “Sam? Before you go, call Gibbs. Do you mind?”

  “I didn’t think you were that attached to Gibbs’s well-being.”

  “I’m not. I was just thinking that if Gibbs has seen Sterling in Colorado, then we’re all done here, right? You and me, we can pack up and go someplace together and, you know… eat.”

  My heart hiccoughed during the hesitation at the end of Carmen’s sentence. Missed a beat? Double beat? I couldn’t tell. “I can do that.” I pulled out my cell phone, fit my reading glasses on my nose, checked for Gibbs’s number in the memory, and dialed. She answered after three rings.