Fickle

by Peter Manus

  I tap. He grunts. I slip round the door as he tips a splash of scotch for himself. Clearly, it’s not his first of the evening, or his second—you realize that this is not a criticism, coming from me. He gestures with the bottle but I shake my head as I lower myself to the edge of one of his guest chairs and absorb the darkened room. Nothing appears askew about the place or Mr. Groin himself. He’s wearing the very olive-toned suit that I met him in. Its padded shoulders are squared, his tie is straight, even his black hair is slicked back shiny. Only his face gives him away—his eyes bloodshot, his skin dead white—but whether that’s from the harsh lighting or the shock of what he’s heard I don’t know. I take in the dampened state of the oversized silk hanky he’s clutching in one of his hairy-knuckled hands and figure I should take the lead.

  Me: I showed up out in Concord for our meeting yesterday, and—I’m sorry but I don’t know what happened or how they are. What have you heard?

  Mr. Groin: (staring at the surface of his desk before speaking) He’s dead. She’s brain dead. Hopefully her heart will stop pumping soon.

  Me: (whispering) I’m so sorry.

  Mr. Groin: Yeah. Me too. I’ll enter his will tomorrow, and hers when she goes. (He drinks.) ’Course, she was to get everything he had. Which was really all she was after when she married him, so there’s your happy ending, huh? (He drinks again, maybe a toast to irony.)

  Me: How…?

  Mr. Groin: (his voice sharp) How much is it worth?

  Me: (blinking in noncomprehension, then shaking my head) How did it happen?

  Mr. Groin: (stares at his desk for a long beat, then raises his dead eyes to stare across at me) You mean you didn’t talk to your cop friend? He was there.

  Me: I didn’t talk to anyone. I saw an ambulance, the housekeeper, and a lot of cops. A neighbor told me there’d been an accident. I went home and called you.

  Mr. Groin: You’re telling me you just rubbernecked and then got the hell out of there? Why wouldn’t you tell them you were there to see the old man? Didn’t you care to know what happened? (Here he cuts off and clutches the hanky hard, staring ahead of himself.)

  Me: A man outside said it was something like a gas leak and seemed to think everyone was going to be okay. The housekeeper was out on the lawn, and she certainly looked fit enough. Besides, last week you told me to avoid the police.

  Mr. Groin: (snorting) Halle–fuckin–lujah. A client who listens for once.

  Me: (a little stung) Well, if I was so thoughtless to drive away from Concord without thinking the worst, what about you? Shouldn’t you be at the hospital, hoping for a miracle?

  Mr. Groin: (looking off to the side for a moment) I had to take care of something, something she would have wanted me to do. (He shifts forward a little, swirls his drink and watches it go around for a moment before raising his eyes to mine.) Besides, I had you to deal with. I figured we ought to have a little talk, you and me.

  Me: (blinking, then catching on) Oh. I understand that your services were only for so long as…You certainly didn’t need to meet me here to tell me that. It could have waited.

  Mr. Groin: (studying me for a long time before speaking) Good of you to understand our working arrangement so clearly. However, that’s not all I wanted to talk about.

  Me: (I wait, then give in) Well?

  Mr. Groin: (still studying me) Why would that cop of yours be running out to Concord for something like this? Doesn’t he have enough going on with his murder-suicide thing?

  Me: Murder-suicide? What murder-suicide? Are you saying one of them turned the gas on purposely?

  Mr. Groin: No. I’m not saying that. I’m asking you what you think your cop friend would be doing out in Concord.

  Me: (I stand up, confused) I don’t understand. What happened out in Concord? You say he’s dead and she’s brain dead. But how? What happened to them, if it wasn’t some sort of carbon monoxide or gas accident?

  Mr. Groin: (looking up at me, and suddenly displaying his perfect teeth in an ugly, joyless smile) I don’t know. Cops don’t either, yet. I expect that we’ll both find out real soon.

  Me: (insistent) But how did he die? You know that, don’t you?

  Mr. Groin: (still smiling, eyes glassy from the booze, he slowly raises a finger to his temple and makes it like a gun, then mimes shooting himself in the head. I see a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, miming a trickle of blood.)

  Me: (sinking back to my seat) How horrible.

  Mr. Groin: She got it at the base of the skull. She wouldn’t have felt anything.

  Me: So he did it to her and then himself? Was there a note?

  Mr. Groin: (He pauses to drain his drink.) No. (He looks at the empty glass a moment, then looks up at me, a glint of malice in his eye.) No gun, either.

  Me: But there must have been.

  Mr. Groin: Oh?

  Me: Well, if…

  Mr. Groin: If?

  Me: If he did it, the gun would be there. Plus a note. People leave notes in these circumstances.

  Mr. Groin: Do they? And you would know because…?

  Me: Because everyone knows that suicides leave notes.

  Mr. Groin: So I guess that means he wasn’t one, eh, Sherlock?

  Me: But you said it was a murder-suicide.

  Mr. Groin: Did I?

  Me: Stop talking in circles! Is this some sort of game for you?

  Mr. Groin: Oh, no. Not for me. And I never said that there was a murder-suicide out in Concord tonight. I said that it was odd that your cop friend would show up out there, when he had his hands full with a murder-suicide here in Boston.

  Me: But it’s not odd. He went out there with me the other night, remember? Wait, though: what murder-suicide here in Boston?

  Mr. Groin: (leaning back in his seat, then speaking quietly) Yours.

  Me: (I stand up involuntarily) My murder-suicide?

  Mr. Groin: Sure, sweetheart. Or, should I say, the murder you’re passing off as a suicide.

  Me: (I actually lose my breath, momentarily, as if he’d suddenly thrown the contents of his glass into my face.) How can you say something like that? Even drunk…

  Mr. Groin: (he stands, too, and leans over the desk aggressively) I’m not that drunk, sweetheart. And I know. I looked into your background. I know all about you and your punk brother and the shit the two of you pulled in the past. I know about your mother getting away with murdering your freak pervert of a father for what he made you and your brother do with one another. But my suspicion is that it wasn’t your mother at all, that she just took the fall for the two of you innocents.

  To my amazement, at this moment I step forward, rear back a hand and slap him across the face. Being as I myself had no idea this was going to happen, he, too, is caught totally by surprise. The slap hits him loud, against the flat of his cheek, hard enough to throw his face to the side. He catches himself with his hand on his blotter. I can see a tiny glimmer of blood seep over the edge of his lip. I’m glad to see it, like I’m glad to feel my hand ringing from the contact with his face.

  Me: (speaking more out of surprise than anything else, but sounding pretty damned incensed) How dare you repeat a pack of small-town lies…

  And this, of course, is where he hits me back. Ah, yes—it figures that Mr. Groin wouldn’t live by any kind of “code of chivalry,” so I suppose I should have expected it. Maybe I was just too pissed off to be thinking defensively—imagine anyone repeating the sewage passing as gossip that stunk up my so-called “home town” after my father’s death. Well, at least it taught me at a young age that the boredom born of unambitious lives can lead to evil. Anyway, Mr. G backhands me, his knuckles hitting my jaw in an upward sweep with a lot of shoulder behind it. He’s drunk, of course, but he works out and I’m a girl, and so it’s enough to send me to the floor. I manage to miss both guest chairs—what a mess that could have been—but I hit the carpet hard and am pretty dazed, momentarily.

  Next thing I know I’m blinking at his elevated w
ingtips and feeling his hands gripping me. I figure he must be contrite about clocking me, but there I’d be wrong. This guy’s even more of a prize than I thought. He pulls me to my feet, maintaining his tight grip on my shoulders, and absolutely spits his words in my face.

  Mr. Groin: You may be one crazy bitch, but let me make something clear: if you think anyone’s going to find that will you talked the old deluded soldier into writing, you’re…

  Me: (pulling back, if only to get away from his boozy saliva) Let go of me. Let go of me or I’ll scream, do you understand?

  Mr. Groin: (instead pulling me closer so that I can see the pink blood bubbles shimmering between his clenched teeth as he grinds out his words) I was there, bitch. For our meeting, remember? I’m the one who found the bodies. I’m the one who lied to the press about the gas leak. I found everything, baby, all of it. And if you think you’re going to get a fucking cent…

  Now, I would normally never even dream of my next maneuver, but I guess when a man is going really deranged on you, you get resourceful. I jam a knee upward, solid, into his crotch. I’m scared to death that I’ll miss and he’ll beat the crap out of me in retaliation, but luck’s on my side and he quite suddenly starts gagging, his face going grey, and kind of half caves in on himself. I manage to pull myself free of him and stumble backward a few steps before catching myself. I’m out of breath from all the nutty stuff he’s been spewing and half expect him to pull himself together and spring at me, but he doesn’t.

  He leans against his desk for a while, head hanging down, breathing, and then, to my relief, he limps his way back around and falls heavily into his seat. This is when he starts crying in earnest. He manages to find his handkerchief and goes as if to mop it across his forehead but ends up clutching the cloth to his face like a shroud as his shoulders shake.

  Me: (All I can think of is that I have to calm him down, coax him out of his delusion that I had anything to do with these deaths. I find that my hands are trembling as I take a swipe at my hair and straighten my dress.) You’re just deranged with grief. You loved her. That’s it, right? You loved her and you found them dead and you need someone to lash out at. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s all, right?

  Mr. Groin: (He gathers up the handkerchief and lowers it, then sits blinking across the desk at me. The green glass shade of his barrister’s lamp has gotten twisted around in our struggle, and now the harsh white light of the tube bulb beams full into his face. The deep creases that run down from his nose are wet. His slick hair is tousled and dangles down his forehead.) Fuck you. (His voice sounds defeated.) Fuck you, you pitiless cunt.

  I back out of his office, leaving him sitting there, crying. When I get to the reception desk, I happen to notice that the office light from down the other hall, the one that had been on when I arrived, is now doused, the voices gone. Without thinking, I duck into the empty conference room, the one behind the glass wall, just off the reception area. I take a seat at the long, oak-veneer table and sit in the dark. I have no reason to be there, nothing in mind, but even as I tell myself this I realize that it isn’t true. I’m waiting, I realize.

  So I wait. Mr. Groin leaves about ten minutes later, passing ten feet from where I’m sitting in the dark, shrugging into his coat, his briefcase in his hand. If he’d turned his head he would have seen me and I would have explained that he’d upset me so much that I’d needed to sit it out. No doubt things would have gotten very ugly at that point. Fortunately, he doesn’t see me. He steps behind the receptionist’s desk, reaches his hand underneath it without needing to see what he’s doing, then goes straight across to the glass door and through it. If I hadn’t seen the man knock back half a pint in front of me, I’d have sworn he wasn’t drunk at all.

  I retrace my steps to his office. He’s closed his door but it isn’t locked, which doesn’t surprise me—lawyers never lock their office doors because if they did the cleaners would skip their office, and they can’t stand the idea of missing out on a menial service they’re paying for.

  Donning my brushed-leather dove-grey opera gloves, I do up the pearlescent wrist buttons as I cross the room to a thickset cabinet on the side wall, the one he’d glanced at when I’d asked him why he wasn’t at the hospital with the Peacock. The cabinet is cherry wood, or something purporting to be, part of the Stickley collection that runs riot throughout the place. I try the “iron” latch but of course it’s locked. I slide my soft-gloved fingers along the top of the cabinet and down its sides, although I know all the while that Mr. Groin will have the key on him or locked in some drawer whose key he carries. I try all the desk drawers anyway, then sit in his chair, swaying slowly back and forth, wondering how I will get into the cabinet. Because I will, of course. It’s in the script, you could say.

  The solution strikes me. I rise, leave his office, and duck my head into the office next door, then the one after that. There are about fifteen offices in all, and about ten of them are small, with built-in furniture, some without windows. Those are for the grunts-at-law. Five, including the Groin’s, are larger. These are for the partners. And, as I’d hoped, one of the other partners has selected the same side cabinet as Mr. Groin. This partner has left the key parked in the lock of his side cabinet. Nothing to hide, I guess. I hook the key, glide back to the Groin’s office, and slip it into the cabinet lock. It does not work immediately, but some minutes of patient wriggling and jiggling does the trick, and I’m in.

  He hasn’t taken any pains to tuck away what he’s got—must think his bullshit lock really works. On the bottom shelf is a handgun, resting on top of a folded piece of paper. I hesitate at the idea of touching—even with opera gloves—what is undoubtedly police evidence connected with a murder investigation, but then I think about the outrageous things that Mr. Groin said about me and dickel and also my dear father (I still miss him with a pain that is palpable), and that steels me. I pick up the handgun and slip it into my purse. I pick up the paper on which it was resting and open it to read it, then quickly refold it and take that as well. I close the cabinet, lock it (another ordeal), then return the key to its rightful cabinet.

  Out in the reception area, I duck down to explore the underside of the receptionist’s desk, where I find a little box. I press the button, and a light begins to blink green. I have no idea whether this means I’ve disarmed the alarm system, but what choice do I have? I slip through the outer door holding my breath, and allow it to close and lock behind me. All is silent—but then there’s nothing that says an alarm isn’t screaming its bloody head off down in the lobby security office. I take the elevator down, scared silly that the doors are going to open to a squad of building drones, ready to riddle my body with rubber bullets. The lobby, however, appears deserted but for a couple of far-off security guys, scratching their asses and gabbing pleasantly. I make a beeline straight for the street exit, my heels clacking like it’s 1942, and when the security guys call out that I need to sign out, I blow them a kiss, then hurry out to the street. When I peek sideways through the rotating revolving door to see how they’ve taken it, they’re laughing. Guess I really do look like a high-price tart, in the right stockings. I half run all the way to the T.

  Once home, I hide the gun (rather well, if I do say so myself), and read the document I’d grabbed from Mr. Groin’s cabinet. It’s just what it appeared to be: a handwritten will, in ink, looking rather shaky and recently written, and signed by the Colonel. I have no idea whether it’s technically valid or even authentic. All I know is that in it, he leaves everything he owns to me.

  GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT

  marleybones @ February 5 12:19 am

  Umm, kick my ass for being an inveterate old cynic, but can I ask a basic question: what are we doing here? I mean, all along this wazzup! fellow from the Netherlands keeps up this incessant series of compliments on our “fan fiction” efforts and for the first moment it occurs to me that he may be correct.

  Please understand, fickel, I for one would be VERY happy if t
hat turned out to be the case, because I like a good scary yarn and I don’t like the idea of you being smacked around by some lawyer, but I’d kind of like to hear again that all of what we’re going through with you is FACT at this point, because I’ve been sweating this out, long distance. So, is all of this for real, fickel, or are you playing us for a fictional thrill ride?

  roadrage @ February 5 12:38 am

  Well, if fickel’s not going to answer, I can tell you that the couple out in Sudbury died. It’s on the news, and they’re being kind of ambiguous about how they died, although they keep pairing it with the story about the carbon monoxide bill. I’m not going to name their real names because that seems to be fickel’s prerogative on this blog, but they’re pretty much the way she’s laid them out, I guess—him a retired old guy who looks kind of military, her kind of a pampered glam-ma’am, at least in the photo they’re using. So these two deaths are for real, marleybones.

  marleybones @ February 5 12:44 am

  Okaaaay, but I’d sure like to hear all that from fickel herself.

  36-D @ February 5 12:48 am

  Look, I’m not too good with the long silences, so I’m going to confess something: I told everything to the Rottweiler. I was convinced that fickel wasn’t protecting herself, and that she needed a lawyer looking into why the cops won’t leave her alone about Mr. Suicide. So it all came pouring out yesterday (with tears), and he made some calls. I’m sooo, sooo sorry, fickel, and I know that you’ll see this as a betrayal, but I swear to you it just happened.

  Anyway, so this is what I now know: Some man did die in the T stop at Hynes, just like fickel said, but the cops won’t say if they think he was pushed. They say that they have several witnesses they are “working with.” Because the Rottweiler isn’t representing any of them, at first he couldn’t get any more from the cops, but he is the Rottweiler, like I keep saying, so I also know that the witness who claimed that some girl was screaming at the deceased just before the train came in is “unreliable.” This is cop talk for a druggie or a felon or someone who has run off or, you know, all of the above. So, again, this backs up fickel.