by G. H. Ephron
Steve’s was an addiction Kate and I shared. We went there after our first time together. Hot fudge and ice cream seemed the only appropriate final act of indulgence.
I parked my car on the street and locked up. I walked the two blocks to Johnny D’s, checking every so often over my shoulder. It was a habit I couldn’t shake. I couldn’t forget that for weeks, Kate and I had been completely unaware of Ralston Bridges stalking us as he carefully planned his attack. Knowing that I could so easily be followed, watched, without feeling even the slightest unease, made me uneasy now.
There was no sign of Annie’s Jeep. Feeling like a dark-suited alien, I threaded my way through the little crowd of smokers standing outside. In the half-light inside, the sound of recorded blues filled the space. On the right side of the club, tiny white lights twinkled above the bar. A luminous television screen at the far end of the bar seemed to hover in a cloud of cigarette smoke. On the smoke-free side of the club, separated by a shoulder-high wall, were tables, a postage-stamp-sized dance floor, and a small elevated stage.
The place was packed and customers from the bar area jockeyed for position in the opening between the two halves of the club. I followed a young man with a ring through his lower lip to a table for two at the back with a good view of the stage. A kid whose hair was buzz-cut on the sides and green Brillo on top was checking out speakers and a tangled mass of cables. The people at the table next to me were laughing and pouring beer from a pitcher. I didn’t recognize most of the groups featured in the posters that lined the walls. I took off my jacket and loosened my tie. Then I unbuttoned my shirt collar and rolled the sleeves. I opened and closed the menu, checked my watch.
When I glanced toward the entrance, Annie was making her way over. She stopped to exchange long-lost-pal greetings and hugs with a variety of bar denizens — male, female, and indeterminate.
“Something to drink?” the young, spiky-haired waitress asked us when Annie settled beside me.
“Do you have Sam Adams Bock Beer?” Annie asked. The waitress nodded and I wondered what it took to get her hair to stand up on end the way it did. “Do you want one, too?” Annie was asking me.
“What’s it like?”
“It’s like … You’ve never had it?” I shook my head. “Well, it’s a little unusual. You can only get it at this time of year. They brew it from the dregs at the bottom of the barrel. They take all this slop and it comes out a dark, sweetish-tasting beer. I like it.”
It sounded awful to me. “Sounds good. Make that two,” I found myself saying.
Annie said, “Can I get an order of conch fritters, sweet potato fries, and crab cakes?”
The waitress looked expectantly at me. “I’ll have the same,” I said.
“Come here a lot?” I asked, glancing at the bar and noticing that one of the men she’d greeted warmly on arrival was staring at us.
Annie grinned. “Some. You know who else hangs out here … or at least used to?”
“Who?”
“Sylvia Jackson. She used to come in here all the time. Sometimes alone, sometimes not. But she rarely left alone.”
“She had lots of boyfriends, I gather?” I asked.
“She certainly did. All the same type. Italian hairdressers and stunt doubles for Arnold Schwarzenegger. And then, we have Stuart Jackson — a hundred twenty pounds dripping wet. Given her taste in men, I can’t figure out what she sees in him. He’s such a dweeb.”
“A dweeb.”
“To use the technical term.”
“On the other hand, he adores her. And he’s very smart,” I said as our beer arrived.
Annie dipped her index finger into the creamy foam, put the finger into her mouth, and drew it out slowly. “I guess for some women, that’s a turn-on,” she said. I found myself wondering what it was that turned on Annie Squires. She gestured to my beer, which was sweating into a puddle. “See what you think.”
I sniffed. Fermented molasses. The taste was better. Not subtle. But dark and rich, almost creamy. “Very nice,” I conceded. “Interesting.”
“Interesting?”
I took another drink and wiped the foam from my lip. “A little more of this and I’ll be ready for a snooze,” I commented, yawning.
Annie stared into her beer before saying, “I know you don’t want to talk about it. I just want you to know that I … we all feel the work has changed since what happened.”
Why couldn’t people just leave well enough alone? What was the point? “Really, you don’t have to —” I started.
But Annie was determined to finish. “So you’re not coming back to the same place, really. It’s a helluva way to learn about murder. But once you’ve seen it from the inside, you can’t treat it quite the same.” It was just a statement of fact. Annie’s direct look didn’t feel like pity.
“So how do you keep doing it?” I asked.
“It’s still a job. It’s how the system works. Don’t think I haven’t considered going over to the other side. I have. But that would be even harder. My heart wouldn’t be in it. And leave the work completely?” She shook her head. “I could never do that.”
“So you can still do this work, defending people you know in your heart of hearts are guilty?”
“When you put it that way …” She looked directly at me with those clear gray eyes. “Maybe you’d understand if you knew how I got into this work in the first place. I’ve never told you, have I?” She rested her chin in her hand and gave a wry smile. “I know it sounds corny, but I always wanted to be a cop. That’s what the men in my family did. I was always pestering my uncles to let me sit in their patrol cars, or put on their caps, or wear their badges. My dad wasn’t a cop, but that’s only because he had this heart condition. Couldn’t pass the physical. He became a printer. You know, a linotype operator. He worked six days a week and late on Saturday, sitting at this enormous keyboard — like one of those big old movie theater organs. Whenever I visited him at work, he’d make me a lead slug with my name in it. He’d hand it to me, still hot. I’ve got a whole collection of them. He’d always say the same corny thing, ‘See, you’re already making headlines.’
“Anyway, his employers were so grateful for all his hard work that when the linotype machine went extinct, they tried to fire my dad and all the people he worked with. Dad was a fighter. He’d take just so much abuse, and then, watch out. He walked picket lines. He’d lie down in front of the trucks trying to deliver newsprint. Quite a few times he got arrested. One time, when he was in jail waiting for the judge to set bail, he got beat up pretty badly. They didn’t even call a doctor. When he got out, he looked like a human punching bag. His kidneys were damaged and he had a detached retina. He never did say who did it and I didn’t ask. But I think it was cops who worked him over. Up until then, cops were family. That’s what broke his spirit. By the time I was in eighth grade, he’d retired without a fuss and turned into a TV junky.”
“So you didn’t want to be a cop after that?”
“No way. Arresting people and putting them in jail lost its allure. Working for the public defender seemed like a logical choice. So you can see why going over to the other side, working for the D.A., could never happen.”
“Has it been a disappointment, not getting that badge?”
“I was going to find out cops are human sooner or later. Good thing I found out before I turned into one.”
“Hey, being human isn’t a bad thing.”
“No, it isn’t, Peter.” She raised her beer and put it down again without drinking any. “So when are you going to let yourself be one?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“That you’re not really here? That a piece of you is in some shadowy place? That you can’t really connect? No, it’s not obvious.” Annie looked at me, leading with her jaw, lips pursed, challenging. She was right. A shadowy place was a good description of where I was much of the time when I wasn’t working. To connect, I’d have to risk loss. And I wasn’t ready for t
hat.
I took a sip of beer. “I got through all the reports.”
Annie sighed. “And?”
“And I think she survived one hell of an ordeal. By the way, did you notice the ER report describes her as twenty-five years old?”
“No, I didn’t. But I can’t say I’m surprised. She has this quality about her. Even now, damaged as she is. You’ll see what I mean the minute you meet her.”
“What?”
“Mmm,” Annie inhaled deeply, “being around her reminds me of the atmosphere just before a hurricane. Humid. Close.” Annie tilted her head and stared at me thoughtfully. “She attracts men.”
“Like bees to honey?”
“Just like.”
“That’s what Stuart Jackson told me, along with another more colorful simile that I won’t burden you with. You think all men are susceptible?”
“Well, most of them.”
Present company excluded? I changed the subject. “Anyway, it’s clear that she suffered massive head trauma. Her brains got pretty well shaken up. According to all the literature and my experience, she shouldn’t be able to recall what happened to her.”
“Shouldn’t?” Annie asked.
“Right. Nothing about brain injury is one hundred percent predictable. Every brain injury is unique. But any time anybody suffers head trauma that results in unconsciousness, we know that at the very least, there’s a correlation between length of coma and the amount of retrograde amnesia.”
The waitress brought our food. To the waitress, Annie said, “Thanks.” To me she said, “In English, please.”
I tend to retreat into psychobabble when I’m nervous and I didn’t like to admit that I was feeling a bit off center. I chewed on a conch fritter. “Right,” I said. “Retrograde amnesia means you forget things that happened before the trauma. The longer you’re out cold, the more you forget.
“What you have to understand is the massive amount of trauma this kind of wound causes. See, the brain itself is this mass of Jell-O surrounded by fluid, inside a hard bony shell. First of all, there’s the actual damage caused by the bullet zipping through. Then think about what it takes, in terms of shock, to break open the skull. The pressure on the skull alone is going to cause brain damage. And any time you have an injury that causes unconsciousness, you become concerned about loss of memory for events immediately preceding it. And Sylvia Jackson was in a coma for six weeks.”
There was a pause that neither of us rushed to fill.
“There was something about a Sergeant MacRae in one of the reports,” I said. “Something she said — that he makes her feel safe.”
“Sounds like she was referring to Detective Sergeant Joseph MacRae. Mac’s the one who interviewed her. He’s been hanging around the hospital from the minute she woke up.”
“You know him?” I asked.
“I know a lot of cops,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “Mac and I went to high school together. Somerville High. Class of ’82. His dad was a cop. Dark blue blood — runs in families.”
“Your families knew each other?”
“We were pretty close to the MacRaes. Once.”
I had the distinct impression that there was more Annie wasn’t saying. “Run into him much lately?” I asked.
“Now that you mention it, I saw him the other day when I went to pick up her medical records. I thought he was there on official business —” Annie paused. I knew we were both wondering why Detective Sergeant Joseph MacRae was still hanging around Sylvia Jackson. The usual police investigation would have been wrapped long ago. “Sylvia Jackson does have that thing about her.”
“Hurricane?” I asked.
“Tropical storm,” Annie whispered. Then, seriously, “How do you work with someone like that?”
“Like what?”
“Someone who’s so … sexually charged. It’s just there. All the time. You know, like an elephant in the living room that no one talks about. How do you keep yourself from being drawn in?”
I smiled. It was just the kind of question people are curious about but very few will come right out and ask. But then, asking questions was what Annie did. “I guess I compartmentalize. You can’t ignore it. It’s there. You recognize it’s there. If you’re attracted, then that’s something to pull out and dissect. You say, okay, here’s this emotional dialogue going on at the same time that there’s a verbal and physical exchange. Part of it’s coming from the patient, but part of it is coming from inside you. It’s not that you shut down. You become hypersensitive. But instead of reacting, you start processing your own reactions.”
“Compartmentalize.”
“Right. I’m an expert at it.”
Annie was staring at me. Appraising. “Sounds like a good skill.”
Right, I thought. As long as it doesn’t become a habit.
There was applause as a guy about my age strode up onto the stage. I wondered if I could get away with tight, low-slung blue jeans, a threadbare T-shirt, and that fringed leather vest. He conferred briefly with the lead guitar, blew tentatively into the mouthpiece of a harmonica, beat the air one, two, three, and the place started to rock.
We didn’t talk again until the break between sets.
“So, was there anything in the police reports that struck you?” I asked.
“Just that the beating was long and especially brutal,” Annie answered.
“Suggests the killer knew Tony and didn’t like him. But why kill him in the house and then drive her to the cemetery before shooting her? Makes you wonder if it was planned out in advance.”
“All of the weapons were right there in the house, waiting to be grabbed.”
“The police didn’t find the gun. Do you think they used Sylvia Jackson’s gun?”
“They?” Annie looked at me, surprised. “What makes you say ‘they’?”
I’d said it without even being aware that I was thinking it. “I guess it’s a lot easier to imagine what might have happened if you conjure up an accomplice.”
“Why would Sylvia Jackson accuse Stuart Jackson if he didn’t do it?”
“Put yourself in her position. You wake up in the hospital. You’re grievously injured, emotionally a mess, and you can’t remember what happened to you. These caretakers and authority figures, these nice policemen, your anchors in a sea of confusion — they want you to remember. They make a suggestion here, another one there. Was this what happened? Maybe it was like that? Well, it’s only natural to start borrowing their suggestions, building on that until you have a whole, plausible explanation. Not deliberately, but unconsciously you start stitching bits and pieces to the ragged edges of the hole in your brain. Or perhaps not.” I shrugged. “That’s the thing about memory. It’s such an individual thing. You can’t know what really happened.”
As we were leaving. I paused at the door to watch a dozen couples swaying to a slow, soulful blues. “Peter,” Annie whispered. She stood facing me, her back to the club. “See the guy standing near the end of the bar? The redhead wearing a Rangers sweatshirt.”
I looked over her shoulder. “I see him,” I said. The redhead she was referring to looked like a Marine. Medium height, solid and broad-shouldered, buzz-cut, he was shaped like a triangle. He stood ramrod straight. He and his buddies were watching a Bruins game. A tall blonde in jeans was attached to him at the hip and his hand rested casually on her bottom.
Annie reached for the finger I was unconsciously pointing. But it was too late. One of his friends had seen me, and now he was whispering and gesturing in my direction.
“Shit,” I said as the redhead swiveled to gawk at me. “Uh-oh. I think he may have spotted me.”
I swapped positions with Annie and sidled onto the dance floor, keeping my back to the bar. “Who is he, anyway?”
“That’s the cop who’s still at the hospital, sniffing around Sylvia Jackson.”
I tried not to look around at the owner of the signature, J. MacRae, Sylvia Jackson’s handler. The other couples on
the dance floor were draped all over one another. Holding Annie at arm’s length and shuffling to the music wasn’t going to make me inconspicuous. I pulled her close.
It had been a long time since I’d held a woman, since I’d danced with anyone. Dancing with Kate had been so easy. We knew each other’s bodies, our rhythms. Our contours fit like puzzle pieces. I closed my eyes and tried to remember, but the memory remained elusive. Annie was taller and she moved with her own sense of the music. She seemed to find an extra beat, a hidden syncopation, and she drew me into it. In spite of myself, I relaxed and let the rhythm of that syncopated bass line insinuate itself into my hips, make its way up into my spine, work its way up on through my shoulders and neck. Annie rested her head against me and I inhaled. She smelled like a fresh-cut melon.
On the drive home, the semi-deserted streets seemed to fly by. I let myself into the house and turned off the porch light. A few moments later, there was my mother’s shave-and-a-haircut knock at the door. I opened it.
She stood on the darkened porch in her pink bathrobe and looked up at me defiantly. “I don’t want to come in, but I can’t sleep until I say something.”
“Hi, Mom. Sure you don’t want to come in for some decaf? Tea? I’ve got some of those cookies you like from Carberry’s.”
“The little Napoleon hats?” my mother said, leaning forward as if drawn inside by some magnetic pull.
“Come?” I stepped to one side.
She shook her head firmly. “No. I just wanted to say I’m glad you told me you were working on a case. And that whatever you do, I have no business saying yes or no. You’ve been doing what you thought was right since you were a little boy. It’s what I brought you up to do.”
