by Dan Deweese
“He’s gotten smarter about it, at least.”
“Only if you think committing federal offenses for no more than a few thousand dollars is smart. And only if he’s naive enough to think this isn’t going to catch up with him. We could get him today. It looks like your teller got a dye pack in with the money, so we know that two minutes after this guy left, there was an explosion of bright purple paint somewhere in the neighborhood.”
“I’m sure he knows about dye packs.”
“Of course he knows they exist. But the note he wrote today asked your teller to pretty please not give him one, and then she did anyway. So has he actually dealt with one of these things before? Did he have a plan for dealing with it? Two minutes is two minutes. And an exploding dye pack is often the first in a series of events that ends with someone in handcuffs.”
“I guess. Though if he’s gone twenty-five years without getting caught, I don’t see why he couldn’t go twenty-five more.”
Buccholz looked at me as if I were a child. “You’re thinking about this as if it’s an on-off switch—as if succeeding once means you’ll be able to get away with something forever. But I’ve been involved in law enforcement my whole life, and I can assure you that the rule is that the longer you try to get away with something, the higher the odds are that you’re going to get caught. I don’t see how this guy has managed to pull this off for twenty-five years, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is his last job. We have prints, a dye pack, photos and video, and we know he lives in the area. I’m not allowed to bet on whether or not we’re going to catch someone, but if I were, I’d give this guy an over/under of twenty-four hours.”
“He’s gotten away with this for twenty-five years, but you think you’ll catch him within the next twenty-four hours?”
“I don’t think I’ll catch him. I don’t run very fast anymore, and I have no intention of chasing some guy and wrestling him to the ground. It’s not personal. There are officers all over town keeping an eye out for him right now. His image has been forwarded to multiple jurisdictions and levels of law enforcement. I don’t have to catch him personally. He will just, at some point, be caught.”
“I see.”
“That’s why your belief that this is all a coincidence doesn’t really hold. You’ve been a bank manager in this city for the last twenty-five years, and he’s been robbing banks around here for the last twenty-five years, so it’s not really a coincidence that he robbed you a second time. You two are in the same business. And that’s pretty much the opposite of a coincidence.” He closed the folder. “But statistical likelihoods are just my personal interest. What was it that was on your mind?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Nothing is on my mind.”
“You said you were worried about far more important things today. That’s why you don’t want to play games with the kid out there in the lobby, who, I will confidentially agree, seems like he’s kind of an asshole.”
“Right,” I said. “My daughter is getting married today. And I wanted to talk to her.”
“And you’re being held up here?”
“Yes. I know where she’s supposed to be right now, but if I want to catch her, I need to leave.”
He shrugged. “You’re aware that you’re not under arrest, right? You’re not being detained in any official way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’re just talking. And I think we both agree that the fact that we’re even standing here in the same room is just the result of a misunderstanding. You’re free to go.”
“You don’t have any other questions? I don’t have to talk to the other officers?”
“I don’t find you to be what we call a person of interest.”
It was almost the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. Either that, or my relief at finally finding someone who shared my opinion that there was no reason to question me—and who was simultaneously giving me permission to go collect my daughter—was so great that the gratitude I felt for the detective was out of all proportion to the event. The disinterest with which he regarded me probably had much more to do with boredom than generosity. And yet it was with the sense of having won some kind of prize that I said, “So I can just walk out?”
“I’m telling you that you may do that.”
“Thank you,” I said, starting toward the doors.
“Though, Paul?” he said. “If you want to avoid your young friend out there, you’ll probably want to find another way out.”
I looked around. Double doors to the kitchen were at the back of the room. And I assumed the kitchen would, at some point, open onto a loading dock or delivery entrance at the back of the building. I had an impulse to sprint immediately in that direction, but managed to resist it. “What will you tell everyone in the lobby?” I asked.
“I’ll tell them you were cooperative and forthcoming, and that I’m confident you didn’t have anything to do with it. If I’m the one who has to suggest to you to leave by the back door, it pretty much indicates you’re not savvy enough to pull off a bank robbery. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said.
“But listen,” he said as he turned to gather the contents of the Mooncalf file back into his folder: “May we never meet again.”
It seemed like he meant it. “Yes,” I said. “That would be nice.”
III
LATE ON A SATURDAY afternoon in October of the year Miranda turned twenty-three, I decided to drive downtown and park across the street half a block from her apartment building. The breeze smelled of earth and apples, and autumn had begun to dab its brilliantine rust over the edges of things. Lawns lay damp and silver with the night’s mist, leaves curled to yellow and orange, and the brick apartment buildings and old stone hotels that lined the streets downtown rose confidently into the clear afternoon sky. I tuned the radio to a ball game I mostly ignored, a sandwich and a magazine on the seat next to me. I felt faintly ridiculous, and yet also unable to stop myself. I wanted to know.
I’d thought I might be in for a long evening, but only a couple hours into the project the surveillance paid off, because here came Grant, walking toward Miranda’s building from the other end of the block. I watched him make his way to the door of the building, press the intercom, and at the electronic buzz, pull the front door open and disappear inside. It was like watching a film projected on a screen: I felt no compulsion to take any kind of action. When they emerged a few minutes later, I started to slide down in my seat until I saw they were headed in the opposite direction, on foot. I hesitated a moment before I got out of the car and took a few uncertain steps, but it quickly became apparent they were paying little attention to their surroundings, and none at all to anything behind them. They were talking. It was dusk. Twin jet contrails flared pink against the scoured basin of sky as Grant and Miranda paused at an intersection, waiting to cross. I stepped into a doorway until they crossed, and then continued following, surprised at how naturally I assumed the role of the follower. This is my place, I thought. Just walking.
Though they were nearly a block ahead of me, I heard Miranda laugh. She sounded happy.
It didn’t last long—a few more blocks, maybe. I watched them step into a restaurant I had never been to, but which I recognized. Like many of the places in that neighborhood, it was new, much talked about, and looked nice. It made sense: they both lived downtown, and they were eating downtown. This was their little world.
I didn’t know what to do. I walked the streets aimlessly for a bit, killing time. Couples were headed to drinks, to dinner, or to see movies or shows. A sullen middle-aged panhandler, his dirty baseball cap pulled low, asked if I had a dollar to spare, and when I told him I was sorry, he muttered something inaudible, though the tone was clear. I asked him to repeat himself.
“I said you’re going out to dinner, but you don’t have a dollar?”
“Do you take credit cards?” I said.
He sneered. “Whatever.”
/> “Because that’s what I use. I don’t have cash for you.”
“Right. Your wallet’s empty.”
“I’m not going to give you a twenty-dollar bill.”
“So go break it.”
“How old are you?”
“Fuck off.”
“Because if you haven’t figured it out by now, I don’t think you’re going to.”
“You’re an asshole,” he said. “People like you are born ass-holes.”
“No,” I said, “that’s what you don’t get. It takes work.”
He flipped me off, and I laughed as I walked away. “I should kick your ass,” he yelled after me, but I just kept walking, feeling the adrenaline in my veins as I made my way back to the restaurant. I stood across from the entrance, trying my best to see inside. It was a big place—part of yet another of the neighborhood’s old warehouses—and there was no sign of Grant or Miranda through the front window. They should be seated by now, I thought. So I crossed the street and opened the door.
There was a burst of noise: voices, music, the clatter of plates. Pale muslin curtains twenty feet tall divided the immense room into multiple chambers. Leather settees lined the wall up front, filled with thin, well-dressed, chatty young people. Glowing light fixtures suspended from the high ceiling dotted the room, the shades shaped in the crazed geometries of Escher explosions or cubist suns. I’d read in the paper that the suave coach of the city’s big college basketball team dined there regularly, as did other local celebrities: stage actors and actresses, jazz musicians, and politicians.
“Are you here for dinner?” the young hostess asked brightly.
“No,” I said, nodding toward the bar. “Just a drink.”
“Of course,” she said. “Wherever you can find a place.”
The bar was made of frosted glass and lit from within, so that everyone seated at it glowed as if they had been admitted to the cheerful afterlife. I managed to grab a spot when a couple stood to move into the dining room, and as I cautiously turned to follow their trek, I saw that seated on the far side of the room, maybe thirty yards off, were Grant and Miranda. Miranda’s back was to me, but I could see her red blouse. She must have been speaking, because Grant was leaning forward with an attentive smile on his face, as if Miranda were quietly sharing a joke at the expense of someone nearby. I turned to the bar and ordered a vodka tonic from the hustling bartender while in the long mirror behind the bar—in the corner just above the pastis and ouzo—I found amid the confusion of faces and lights the small splash of scarlet that was Miranda’s blouse. The little spot of color trembled as the room’s din produced vibrations in the glass.
“Waiting for someone?” the bartender asked as he delivered my drink.
“No.”
“Did you want to look at a menu?”
“Why not?” I said, peering again into the mirror. Beyond Miranda’s red blouse, though, I saw only indistinct shadows, a darkness that shifted and rippled behind the shining bottles of liquor. I wondered what I intended to do. Confront them? No. But then how long did the surveiller need to surveil? I had my confirmation—nothing more was necessary. I had a fresh drink, though, and a menu in front of me. I watched the bartender shake a cocktail as if in a rage, though his face remained impassive. When he finished pouring and delivering the drink, he moved back down the bar. “Did you see anything?” he asked.
“You have ostrich on here,” I said. “What does it taste like?”
“A lot of people like it. Have you ever had buffalo?”
“No.”
“It tastes a lot like buffalo.”
“How is that possible? One’s a bird, the other’s a what? A beast.”
He shrugged. “I don’t make ’em, I just serve ’em.”
“I’ll take the ostrich,” I said. “Medium.”
He took my menu and tossed it beneath the bar, as if it were just a cheap prop. For a few minutes, I actually enjoyed some anticipatory thoughts about ostrich, as well as some speculation on buffalo, instead of thinking about who was across the room. And then of course when I returned from my little mental flight and looked back into the mirror, the swatch of red was gone.
I turned. Their table was empty. So I turned even further, abandoning discretion as I wondered how they had slipped away. I had been distracted for no more than three or four minutes. Where could they have gone?
“She went home.”
I spun back in the other direction, and there was Grant, standing five feet from me.
“You have no peripheral vision,” he said.
Until that moment, I hadn’t felt angry. Once he spoke, though—or maybe it was his tone—I felt the urge to spit. Instead, I concentrated on my drink. There were no open seats at the bar, though, so he ended up standing next to me, uncomfortably close. “This isn’t a coincidence, is it?” he said.
We were surrounded by strangers, all of whom seemed to be happily laughing and chatting. “That you’re dating my daughter?” I said quietly.
“You followed us,” he said. “I’m flattered.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“This is a bad way for this to happen. I wanted to tell you.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “Because when is the right time?”
Jesus. I could think of dozens of possible answers to that question. “There are thousands of women you could date in this city,” I said.
“Not like her.”
“Really? What about her is so unique?”
“You don’t need me to answer that. You know how extraordinary she is.”
“She’s a receptionist at an art gallery.”
“She’s smart,” he said. “And confident. With a great sense of humor.”
“She’s twenty-three.”
“But with a tremendous ability to size people up, to see what’s really going on.”
“She’s my daughter,” I said. It seemed a fact so transcendent that it rendered anything else irrelevant. Miranda always had been, and always would be, my daughter. Before she was born—before I was born—and after both of us were dead, it would still be true. What could he possibly think he was doing?
“I guess I hoped you might be happy for us,” he said.
“What a stupid thing to hope for,” I said.
“She’s an adult,” he said. “And I didn’t start it.”
“You always start it. Everything about you is an attempt to attract women.”
“You don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you want another?” the bartender said. His tone seemed deliberately flat, as if he were aware of what he was interrupting.
“Yes,” I said.
“Not for me,” Grant said.
“You’re not staying?” I said, but Grant didn’t respond. I waited for the bartender to deliver my drink before I said, “How long?”
“A few weeks,” he said.
I tried to process it, to place it into some version of reality, but I couldn’t. “No.”
“She asked me to get a drink after work.”
“You could have said no.”
“I did,” he said. “I said it wasn’t a good idea. But she asked me again two days later.”
“You should have said no again.”
“I did. She asked again.”
I slammed my palm against the bar. “You should have said no forever.”
He nodded. “I thought that, too. But then I couldn’t figure out why.”
I shook my head, stunned by how much I hated him. He couldn’t figure out why? What was unclear to him? “Just end it,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m asking you to.”
“What’s between us is real,” he said.
“Nothing with you is real,” I said. “Everything is about appearances. You once told me everything is an interview. Remember?”
He seemed baffled. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t remember every conversation we’ve ever
had.”
“You want to be with her because it will make you look good,” I said. “That’s the only reason you ever do anything. It’s who you are.”
“I’m surprised to find out how little you think of me. Though the idea that you could tell me who I am is completely preposterous.”
“You’re too complex for me?” I said. “Too incredibly subtle?”
“Subtle?” he said. “No. I’m too direct for you. When I want something, I pursue it.”
“And you think I don’t?”
“What have you ever wanted?”
“How about safety and security for my daughter?”
“She’s hardly in danger,” he said. “And I asked what you wanted, not what you’ve decided to demand of Miranda. When you say safety and security, I think what you mean is that you want an absence of conflict—for yourself. And that’s nothing. It’s not life.”
“So I can’t tell you who you are, but you can tell me about myself?”
“Sure, I’ll tell you about yourself. What you’re doing is right. You think I’ll hurt your daughter, and you want to destroy anyone who might hurt her, because she’s everything to you. But she’s her own person now. And you have to be your own person, too.”
