by David Daniel
“Man your size oughta be able to dunk it,” the kid said, a note of playground challenge in the way he did.
I said, “Catch me in the A.M. with coffee and a doughnut in my hand.”
But, hell, I felt good. I put up the same shot, same crisp roll off the fingertips, same clean arc. It missed by five feet. The kid grinned and kept the ball this time.
I climbed through a neighborhood of swank apartment buildings to High Street. Across town a train hooted happily. At the Father Norton Senior Center the old folks were out front on the benches and in wheelchairs, doing the last good thing left them: talking, enjoying it in a way few people my side of decrepitude ever do. I waved. On the street corner a pretty young Dominican woman, her features perked up with lipstick and rouge, waited for her swain, who arrived a moment later in a twenty-year-old convertible that gleamed like new, merengue pumping from its radio. In a doorway a middle-aged black man wearing a dated but well-brushed suit nodded at me and smiled. I had a sense, if not of true community, at least of people getting along on a Saturday night in summer.
The International Institute was alight and buzzing with guests. Francis X. was there in his TV suit and a tie like a striped kite, representing the department, glad-handing Southeast Asian community leaders, doing right by his family name as he carried on about how the Cambodians living in the city were a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit, not to mention how the LPD was there to guarantee protection for one and all. He watched me limp past without missing a beat.
I was able to look over the heads of most of the crowd. At the front of the hall, eight large-framed photographs were propped in a rainbow of chrysanthemums. One was of Bhuntan Tran and another was of Suoheang Khoy. Although there would be solemnity later, now there was a mood of festivity in the air. “Let be be finale of seem,” Wallace Stevens had written. “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.” It seemed reasonable.
I spied Ada with an intense, good-looking man in a brown suit and tortoiseshell glasses. They were working the room slowly, talking here and there. She didn’t see me, so I walked over and held up a wall. But every few seconds I filched a glance at Ada and felt myself grin like a madman on the inside.
We had had our conversation the afternoon following the events in Walter Rittle’s trailer, after my knee surgery. She finally told me the story of her brief marriage to Khoy. It had been part of her early attempt to save the world one leaky dike at a time. “It was also the last straw for my father,” she said. “We’d been coming to that for a long time, I guess. The one lever he’d always had was the family money, which in truth neither my brother Chad nor I even cared about.”
When I told her about having looked at her checkbook and bills that other morning, and about my conversation with Sydney Keyes at the antique gallery, Ada’s expression darkened. “So you were suspicious of me.”
What could I say?
“That must be a lousy way to be, Alex … to have become.”
“Rotten, I admit it. But it wasn’t all pink smoke. You omitted information in order to keep me hanging in there—you figured I’d drop the case otherwise.”
She didn’t deny it. But she also had never figured Khoy for being involved. The five thousand he supposedly had given to Tran actually came from Ada herself because, she said, she saw great promise in Tran. In wanting to see his name cleared after his death, she was protecting her investment. Of the man on the tape machine that other morning, she told me he was Trevor someone, a U.S. attorney she had met through refugee work and whom she had dated a few times when he got up to Boston on business. We had ended on an ambiguous note.
A registered check for the week’s work plus a bonus had arrived two days ago, on Thursday. She had been out of town since, but I had known she would be here tonight.
“Bus don’t stop here no more, mister.”
I had no quip to top it. She was alone, finally. The white satin dress set off her hair and eyes, and I silently thanked old Charles Blaine Stewart for his taste in all things rare. She was to every other woman in the room what a diamond is to a crate of cubic zirconias. She held a white chrysanthemum in her hand. “How’s your knee?”
“I’m walking. When did you get back?” I asked.
“This afternoon. It’s been an intense week. How have you been?”
“Working.”
“What a surprise.” She laughed softly. She snapped most of the stem off the flower and arranged it in the buttonhole in my lapel. I felt fawned over.
“I got the check,” I said, never at a loss for banter.
“You earned it. I’ve still got a few resources.” She winked and took my hand and led me out to the portico in front of the building, away from the crowd. High overhead, cirrus clouds traced the last pinks of sunset.
“Walking, and working, and waiting too,” I said, turning to her at the fence by the sidewalk. “I’ve missed you, lady. I’m glad you’re back.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Alex. You know I’ve been under it at work, starting to lose the old fire.” She put a hand on the fence, instead of on me, which I took as not a good sign. “I got an offer this week. There’s a staff opening on the Justice Department’s committee on refugees.”
“Washington?”
“Mostly, with some overseas travel.”
“Well, it’s a good opportunity, isn’t it?”
She was watching me carefully. “I really would like to take it. I think I’m ready for change.”
“Why not.”
“There are private investigators in D.C. too, I hear tell.”
“With all those honest politicians?”
Her smile had an unfamiliar strain. I lifted my shoulders and dropped them. “It’s not an occupation that transfers easily,” I said.
“What about one of the big law firms? They must use investigators. I’ve got some contacts. With some networking…” She saw my look and let the thought fade. “How about a security company?”
“Would I get to wear a patch on my sleeve?”
She dropped her eyes to her hand on the fence. Finally she looked up. “What would suit, Alex? Is there anything?”
I touched her shoulder and felt the tension there, alive and warm beneath my hand. If we could get away from here, right now, I thought. I glanced along the empty street for a cab.
“In my dictionary,” I said, speaking carefully, “network is still a noun. To be halfway good at this job depends on knowing the streets, knowing which wheels can be greased, who can be leaned on. Knowing a cop or two doesn’t hurt either. All that takes years if you’re lucky.”
“Like having friends?”
“That sometimes can be accomplished in a shorter time.”
“I haven’t noticed you’ve got many.”
I met her eyes. “Two or three good ones are worth a cheering throng.”
“You could have one very good friend in Washington,” she said. She moved out from under my hand. “The real reason you wouldn’t go is that file you showed me, isn’t it?”
I felt the mood of expectancy caving in like sand being sucked away underfoot by a powerful wave that has crashed on shore and now has to return to where it came from. “There’s a moon tonight,” I said, pointing across rooftops to where it was rising fat and yellow.
“Sounds like an old love song,” Ada said softly.
Silence hung for a moment, then she said, “Did you ever read The Catcher in the Rye?”
“That the one about the drunk ballplayer?”
“You accused me of having little Dutch kid disease, but you’ve got Caulfield Syndrome.”
“Bad?”
“I saw you cover those photos of some nude young woman on your desk that first day.”
“They could’ve been my private stash.”
She shook her head. “I think about Holden trying to rub out the dirty words on the grammar school steps, wanting to keep the children safe, but realizing that if one were to spend a li
fetime, he couldn’t erase all the dirt in the world, all the hard truths.”
“He’s probably onto something there.”
“So why do you try?”
“I might ask you the same. You went through a lot of trouble and risk to clear Bhuntan Tran.”
“We’re talking about you,” Ada said. “Do you remember what happened to Holden?”
“Didn’t end happily ever after, did he?”
“He cracked up.”
“I’m not that complicated.”
“That isn’t the only fate that can befall you. There’s frustration. Discouragement.”
I’d taken a double major in them. “Yeah, well…”
“People can end up alone too,” she said.
I let that one be, like a stone lying on the floor of my heart. Another stone must have stuck in my throat, because no words would come.
“I guess I knew what your reaction would be,” Ada went on quickly. “While I was in Washington I got another offer too.”
“Two jobs?”
She shook her head. “Trevor.”
“The voice on the phone.”
“It happened kind of unexpectedly. He’s getting a promotion. He’ll be an advocate for people applying for citizenship, and we’re both interested in that and he … he asked me to marry him.”
“And you didn’t say no?”
“He’s looking for stability. I guess I am too. Funny, I’ve never really thought of myself that way, but I suppose I am. You can turn your back on your family, but in some part of you, you always know it’s there. You get used to knowing that. I like the idea of Washington, but it’s easy to get swamped in that town, especially alone. And I believe that together he and I can make a real difference.”
“I thought we made a real difference here,” I said. “Right here in this town.”
“We did, and a lot of people are indebted to you, including me. Especially me.”
“The hell with that,” I said. “Tell the guy no. There’re planes every day, and trains and cars. We could do this.”
Ada swallowed. “Could we?”
Someone appeared at the doorway and said the program was starting. Ada took my arm in both her small hands and drew me farther away, along the brick wall toward the street. “If things had been different…” she said, “the timing, or…” She let it go and tried again. “The thing is, I don’t meet many people like you, someone who’s truly honest and responsible for himself, not needing a lot from others. Self-reliant.”
“People have called it a failing.”
“People who couldn’t stand alone if their lives depended on it. I think Trevor is strong in his way, but he also needs me in a way I don’t think you ever would.”
“You don’t know that.”
We had stopped walking. Street lamps had come on, and when she turned to look at the door, I saw a wet gleam in her eyes. “No,” she said, “I don’t, and I guess I’ll never find out. My loss.” Her voice had thickened and she cleared her throat. “I don’t imagine you want to meet him?”
“Guy in the brown suit?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll grant you that one.”
“I’ve got to go, then. I’m supposed to make a little speech later.”
“Another one?”
“Happier than this one, I hope,” she said, and choked.
I didn’t release her hand yet. “You’re one of the honest ones too,” I said. I kissed her forehead. “Remember to use first person plural in your home.”
Her tears were rolling then, and she hooked them away with her thumb. “I won’t forget you, Rasmussen.”
“Who?”
She smiled brokenly, maybe gratefully, and hurried up the walk to the door. There was applause inside, which made it a good time to slip in, the way you do at church when you’ve come late. She was gone in an instant.
So I limped down High Street to East Merrimack and turned left. The moon turned too. Somewhere a train hooted, unhappy to be back in Lowell. In a laundromat a couple were folding a double bedsheet, which was a dance with steps all its own. I went past the repertory theater where Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit was running, and past the War Memorial Auditorium, and Chevy’s Bel-Air Lounge. Inside Chevy’s a mirrored globe was throwing splinters of color through the smoked windows. “I Only Have Eyes for You” was playing, the good old version by the Flamingoes, the voice of the lead singer floating languidly out onto the summer night. Boy, that brought me back to being a kid, which I definitely wasn’t anymore. I felt ancient.
I walked across the Concord River flowing slick and black beneath my shoes, a few hundred yards away from losing itself forever in the bigger waters of the Merrimack. I took the chrysanthemum from my lapel, sniffed it, then dropped it and watched it slip under the bridge. I went past the federal building. Ahead, the sign atop the old Sun offices glowed high above the street. I could have got my car and gone back to the empty apartment, but I didn’t want to just then. I wanted to stop by the office. Maybe there was a message on the tape, or someone in the waiting room who urgently needed my valuable services. A full moon did crazy things to people.
“Sha-bop sha-bop,” I sang, for no good reason at all.
About the Author
David Daniel has been a carpenter, a clam digger, a tennis pro, and an assistant in the Harvard Medical School neuropathology lab. He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and at Middlesex Academy Charter School. His new book of short stories is called Six Off 66. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
About the Author
Copyright
THE HEAVEN STONE. Copyright © 1994 by David Daniel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
First edition: October 1994
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
eISBN 9781250162267
First eBook edition: February 2017
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