by Ed Gorman
“Much better.”
“ Now will you help me clean up?”
I concentrated on the grill and she worked on the dishes. When I came inside she was just loading the dishwasher. “See, that didn’t take long.” She tossed me a towel. “How about I wash and you dry? I’ve still got these pots and pans to take care of.”
The kinds of relationships I’d had with women in the past had been all sex and tension. Lots of breakups and makeups. There hadn’t been time in all the groping and battling to get domestic in any way. Wendy and I were already married in an informal sort of way. But sometimes I got scared it would all end for some terrible reason.
She jabbed me in the ribs. “You haven’t seemed to notice but there aren’t any more pots or pans to dry. You’ve been standing there with that last one for a couple of minutes now. You must be thinking of something really fascinating.”
“I’m just hoping this doesn’t come to an end any time soon.”
“You keep asking me to marry you and you say something like that?” She smiled and kissed me. “Look, Sam, I worry about the same thing. And that’s why I just want to wait a little while. We’re crazy about each other. I want to spend my life with you. But I just want to be careful about it.” She took pan and towel from me and set them on the counter. “Maybe we’d better discuss this in the bedroom.”
By the time we finished making love, neither of us had enough energy left for discussing anything. She fell asleep against my outstretched arm. The aroma of her clean hair was innocently erotic.
The call came at 3:26.
The phone was located on the nightstand on Wendy’s side of the bed-as was only right; it was her bed-and before I was completely aware of what was going on, she had the phone to her ear and was talking. She’d told me once that all the while her husband was in Nam, where he eventually died on his second tour, she had nightmares about the phone ringing in the middle of the night and a cold military voice telling her that her husband was dead. She told me that she woke up several nights to find the phone in her hand, a dial tone loud in her ear. She’d incorporated the nightmare into reality.
“It’s Mike,” she said, lifting up the Princess-style phone and planting it on my stomach. I took the receiver and listened. I asked him to repeat what he’d said, so he went through it once more. He said he was at the crime scene and that if I wanted to join him it would be all right. He said that Cliffie wouldn’t be there; he’d called the chief but the chief felt that Potter could handle it. I could sense Potter’s smile when he quoted Cliffie: “I think you’ve learned a lot from me since you’ve been here and I’ve let you handle a number of other things already. You just keep me posted-the morning’s soon enough.” This was the first time I’d heard Potter draw down on Cliffie. But it was late and the scene he was at had to be a true bummer.
“What’s going on?” Wendy whispered. Since I was still talking to Potter, I held up my hand to wave her off.
“I’m on my way, Mike.”
Wendy had slipped into the bathroom. I heard her pee and then start brushing her teeth. If the National Dental Society or whatever it was called wanted to give a trophy (a big shining jewel carved into a tooth) to the person who brushed her teeth the most times a day, Wendy would be their choice. Seven, eight times a day and that doesn’t count flossing.
I got a light switched on and dressed. I used one of her hairbrushes to batten down my own dark mess. I was lighting a cigarette when she came out wearing a ragged old robe she liked. She managed to look tousled, sweet, and very sexy.
She came over and took my cigarette from me. She inhaled deeply, exhaled in a blast. She held up a finger. “One more.” After she finally gave me my smoke back, she said, “Mike sounded shaky. What’s going on?”
“Tommy Delaney,” I said, “hanged himself earlier tonight.”
20
Cue the rain.
Halfway to the Delaney residence a hot, dirty summer rain shower started pelting my car. I had the radio turned up to KOMA in Oklahoma, still my favorite station. In the middle of the night this way the signal was stronger than during the day. A bitter anti-war song seemed right for this moment. I kept lighting one cigarette from another. I resented all the snug people in their dark snug houses as I passed street after street.
All the natural questions came to me. What had Tommy Delaney wanted to tell me and then backed away from? Was this going to be another murder disguised as a suicide? Had he left a note explaining everything?
The Hills had never looked better, the darkness a mercy to the crumbling houses and sad metal monsters parked curbside, all cracked windshields and rusted parts and political bumper stickers for men who had only contempt for the owners. The closer I got to the Delaney place the more lights I saw in the small houses. The people inside would have heard the sirens and seen the blood splash of emergency lights pitched across the sky. Most would have stayed inside; after all, it was raining now, and who wanted to get wet? But the vampires among them would have shrugged on raincoats and trudged out. Pain, misery, and death awaited them, and this was a tasty brew that would give them a fix of the life force they sought.
The local press was already there. The cops had shunted them to a corner of the action. A beefy part-time deputy stood next to them to make sure they didn’t stray. I parked next to the ambulance and walked over to where Mike Potter was giving orders to another part-time deputy. The crowd numbered somewhere around thirty, not a sell-out crowd but not bad for a rainy four a.m. show that wasn’t in 3-D or Cinemascope.
The air smelled of wet earth, exhaust fumes from all the vehicles, and a cancer ward’s worth of cigarette smoke, my own contribution included. Two squad cars sat together shining their headlights on the front of the garage. The door was down so all I could see was the blank white wood with rust snaking down from the roof. Above the door was the basketball hoop where I’d seen Tommy Delaney shooting baskets that day.
As I approached Potter I heard a scream from inside the house. The piercing agony of it stopped me as I think it stopped everybody who heard it. I’d been surveying the scene the way an investigator would. The scream forced me to survey it now as a simple human being. No doubt one or both of the parents had found their son hanging from a crossbeam in the garage. A madness would set in. They would blame themselves, they would blame him and they would blame existence itself, a ramble scramble of rage and grief and even more rage. I’d worked with enough social workers to know how suicides like this played out.
Potter said, “I’d stay away from his folks if I was you.”
“They mentioned me?”
Rain pattered on his police cap. “According to her, her son was a nice, easygoing kid until you started pestering him about the Mainwaring girl.”
“That’s bullshit.”
He had a flashlight the size of a kid’s baseball bat in his hand. “C’mon, I’ll take you into the garage.”
On the way in, I said, “Did you hear me? What she said is bullshit. I came out here twice. Twice. That’s hardly ‘pestering’ him or whatever she said. In fact, I’m pretty sure he wanted to talk to me about something.”
“Then why didn’t he?” The cop guarding the side door stood aside as we approached.
“How do I know why he didn’t?”
“But you’re sure he did? He sent you some kind of mind message?”
The sarcasm ended the minute we stepped inside. The hard-packed dirt floor, the rain and cool air streaming through the glassless window frame in back, the smells of gasoline, oil, and dirt, now joined with vomit and feces. Somebody had run the only car outside so that the police could bring in all the necessary equipment to nail down every aspect of the suicide.
The way Tommy’s mouth was twisted, it was almost as if he’d been smiling when death had taken him, a grotesque smile that seemed fitting for his end. He wasn’t twitching, anyway, twitching the way he’d been with his folks screaming behind him in what was likely their ongoing marital war.
I remembered the tic in his left eye and the forlorn, beaten tone of his voice. Their voices would have been with him as he’d looked for shelter and solace somewhere else. The Mainwaring home would have provided that.
All he wore was his jeans; no shirt, no shoes. Puke streamed down his chest and his right foot had been splashed with his runny feces.
“He left a note.”
“Let’s talk outside.”
Potter raised his eyes, studied Tommy for a time then looked at me. “Yeah, outside.”
The rain was backing off to a drizzle and the action was slowing down to the point that some of the ghouls, soaked, were wandering home. The hardiest of them would stay to see the corpse inserted into the ambulance.
I felt somebody watching me and when I looked to my left I saw Mrs. Delaney hiding behind a kitchen curtain. Even from here her hatred was clear.
“I got on a ladder and climbed up and looked at the ligature marks, Sam. No doubt about this one as far as I’m concerned. He definitely killed himself. The M.E.’ll examine him and make absolutely sure it’s suicide.”
“I didn’t have any doubt about this one.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, the little time I spent with him he struck me as a pretty sad kid.”
“Hell, he was a football hero.”
“Not when you heard his parents shrieking at each other. I stood on the front lawn and heard them. Tommy was coming apart. It was like shell shock. And that came from years of listening to them trying to destroy each other. The other thing was he wanted to tell me something-at least that was the impression I had. But he could never quite do it.”
“Any idea what it was?”
“No. But he knew a lot about the Mainwarings.”
He lighted a cigarette now that the rain wouldn’t soak it. The smoke smelled good in the chilling air. “That note he left, he apologized to his parents for taking his life and asked them to pray for him. And then he said that he never had any luck with women and that he just couldn’t go on.”
“And that’s all?”
Before he could answer, the back door screeched open and barked shut. I saw her coming at me. Nuclear warhead. No confusion about who she wanted and what she planned to do.
Potter saw it, too, and stepped in front of me. “Mrs. Delaney, I asked you to please stay inside.”
She pointed a witch finger at me and screamed: “He killed my Tommy! He wouldn’t leave him alone! Tommy was scared of him! Tommy’d be alive if it wasn’t for him!”
“Please, Mrs. Delaney-please go back inside. This isn’t good for you or your husband.”
But it was great for the living dead, the remainder of the group already pushing their way toward the garage. Drama was almost as good as blood.
She flung herself at Potter, trying to get her hands on me. “He should be the one who’s dead! He should be the one who’s dead! He killed my Tommy!”
Paralysis. I couldn’t move, speak. I was afraid of what I might have done to contribute to Tommy’s suicide-maybe he felt pressure to tell me something but was afraid to and my contacting him scared him-just as I was afraid of her. All that anger, all that sorrow. I wanted to say something to comfort her but anything from me would sound blasphemous now.
“Just let me tell him to his face!” She dove at Potter but a stocky, balding man in a Hawkeye T-shirt came up from behind her and put big workingman hands carefully on her shoulders and began the inch-by-inch process of extracting her from Potter’s body.
He just kept saying, “C’mon now, honey; c’mon now, honey,” the way you might to a small child you were trying to soothe. Soft words, loving words. Hard to imagine this was the same man I’d heard battling this woman when I came here the first time to talk to Tommy. This time he was saying the right thing in the right way.
When he finally drew her to him, she folded herself into his arms and wept. He put one of those big hands on the back of her head and began stroking her gently. This made her weep even more.
This time the paralysis wasn’t just mine. Potter stood in place, too, just watching her collapse into her husband’s keeping. Not even the ghouls said anything, or moved. I thought of a documentary I’d seen about a tiger cub born dead and the mother trekking the corpse nearly a hundred miles across scorching, dusty Africa. Not wanting to ever give it up. Mr. Delaney showed that kind of ferocious protectiveness as he slowly guided her back toward the house. He kept muttering his mantra. She clung to him with a desperation that made them indivisible.
Potter said, “Nothing with kids. And Tommy was a kid.”
We’d had this conversation a number of times, how he could handle just about anything but death scenes involving kids or young people. He said he’d seen too many such scenes in Kansas City. He never elaborated on any of them.
Then he got brisk and officious. He wanted to wrap things up. The M.E. could get here and give his benediction and then everybody-except one unlucky uniform-could go home and catch what remained of sleep before the six-thirty alarm clock.
The remaining ghouls began to fade. A light went on in a back room. Shadows against a cotton blind. A piercing sob, then silence. The light went out.
“I hope this is the end of it,” Potter said. Irritation was clear in his eyes and voice. “No more murders or suicides. My wife keeps reminding me that we moved out here to take it easy. Now my migraines are back, I’m downing a bottle of Pepto a day, and I’m constipated.”
“Pepto constipates you.”
“I know, but it’s either that or having heartburn that damn near knocks me out.”
I stared with great longing at my car. It would take me away from here. I would be back in bed with Wendy. In the morning the sunlight would be golden and pure and maybe we’d make love in it and then have breakfast on the back porch and Wendy would be sweet and fetching and for a time I wouldn’t have to think about everything that had happened in the past few days or whether Wendy was going to marry me sometime soon. Or if my National Guard unit would be called up for the war that was a farce and a cruel joke on the American people.
“You be sure and keep me posted if you hear anything,” Potter said.
“I will.”
As I walked to my car I saw Mr. Delaney in one of the kitchen windows watching me. I almost waved. Instinct. But in this instance waving would be more than slightly inappropriate. I got one quick good look at his face. He seemed to hate me as much as his wife did. Maybe more but he couldn’t express what he was feeling the way she did. He just stared.
In my car I snapped the radio on. Then right back off. Wrong to listen to the radio somehow. Instead I smoked and drove fast. Very fast. I didn’t go back to Wendy’s, I just drove. It was one of those robotic driftings I went through occasionally. Wasn’t aware of where I was driving or what I was seeing. Just driving, the act itself lulling me into a state where nothing mattered but the present moment-my fortress against any kind of serious thought.
The first time I became aware of where my car was taking me was down on D Avenue where the Burger Heaven and the second-run theater used to be. There’d been a used-paperback store there for a while, too. And a tavern where they kept their pinball machines in front so teenagers could play them and not get carded or thrown out. It was all gone now. A supermarket and a new Western Auto took up most of the block. No comfort in those.
Wendy was asleep on the couch in her pajamas when I came in. The TV was on and snowy. Victor dozed on the armchair. I went into the kitchen and got myself a beer and sat down in the breakfast nook.
She came in soon enough. “I tried to wait up for you.” Sliding into the booth across from me.
“You should’ve stayed in bed.”
“You ever think I was worried about you?”
“If you’re so worried about me why don’t you just say you’ll marry me?”
“Boy, you’re in one hell of a mood.”
“If you say so.”
“All right, I’ll marry you. You
set the date.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. I’ve been thinking about it. We love each other and even though I’m scared about it I don’t want to ruin everything by putting it off. I just realized that if you ever walked out the door I would be miserable for the rest of my life.”
“Well, probably not for the rest of your life.”
“Goddammit, you’re in a bad mood. I tell you I love you and that I want to marry you and you just keep on bitching about things.”
“Well, I’m happy about it. Of course.”
She was out of the booth before I could say anything more.
“Go to hell, Sam. I don’t want you in my bed tonight. You take the couch.”
Then she was gone. It hadn’t done me any good to take Tommy’s suicide out on her. I gave it twenty minutes and then went into the dark bedroom and told her how much I loved her. She laughed and said, “I was wondering when you’d show up. Now get into bed.”
21
I was in court the next morning. A divorce case. By the time of the trial I’d come to pretty much hate both of them. Selfish people who’d forgotten that they had two very lonely and frightened little girls to take care of. He’d told me, quite earnestly, that as soon as the papers were signed it was “Nookie City for this guy.” There are men who could have pulled it off and made you smile along with it. He wasn’t one of them. He was, I suppose, good-looking in a big-guy sort of way but he was as vain as a starlet, always combing his hair and watching his biceps pop in his short-sleeved shirts.
One time when he was in my office, I went to the john and came back to find him sucking in his gut and putting the moves on Jamie. She was wily enough to say, “My dad wears the same aftershave you do.” A thirty-eight-year-old self-described stud (“Hey, chicks dig me and Elaine could never understand that, the bitch.”) being compared to a God-only-knows-how-old Granddad-type? He got back to business, which meant running down his ex some more and winking at me every time he mentioned “chicks.” Number one, I hate people who wink and number two, his winks looked like tics.
