by Dick Cluster
“Could you please answer the questions first?”
Yes, Alex thought, I know, you’re asking the questions here. He hesitated in part because the detective was a short man himself, maybe five-six or five-seven, and Alex didn’t want to give any needless offense. It was just that, from Alex’s height, women of Suzanne’s shape and size often looked as if they suffered from too much gravity— as if they’d be quite beautiful if only they could be stretched back out.
“Yeah, she was attractive, I guess,” Alex said at last. “I’m more turned on by taller women, if you really want to know.” Trevisone let his eyes roam across the room to Meredith and back. If he wanted to think the comment had been flattery, that was up to him. Probably he didn’t give a shit what kind of bodies Alex preferred. Probably all he wanted to know was whether Alex was holding something back. “What are you after, Sergeant?” Alex asked then. He said it in a deferential, assistant-investigator way, yet implying their previous cooperation gave him the right to ask.
“Standard question. I’m just eliminating something, if you really want to know. You ought to hear the stories baby-sitters come in with about the guys who hire them. Anytime you’ve got a father and baby-sitter in a violent case, any good cop’s ears will perk up.” He looked at Meredith again. “So,” he went on to Alex, “you agree with Ms. Phillips that it was completely unexpected, her running out on your daughter like that?”
“It was completely unexpected to me.”
“And she was just there to baby-sit your daughter.— no other connection between the two of you?” Trevisone let that question hang in the air for Alex to interpret any way he wanted. Alex didn’t risk a glance at Meredith now. Presumably she had told Trevisone about the restaurant, but if not, Alex wasn’t going to volunteer the information. So he took the question as referring to his and Suzanne’s relationship as of Saturday night.
“That’s right,” he answered. Trevisone sighed and turned to look at the big round clock on the wall.
“Okay, that’ll do for now anyway,” he said, extending his hand for Alex and then Meredith to shake. “Thank you. Both of you can go on home.”
“Thank you,” Meredith said. “As Suzanne’s teacher and somebody she trusts, is there any chance I could be kept informed about your investigation?”
“No,” Trevisone said. “But feel free to call if you have any new information to add.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Alex thought it was unlike her, failing to face up to a situation, continuing to talk about poor Suzanne Lutrello in the present tense. In the dingy hallway she looked back. Trevisone had stayed in his office and shut the door.
“It wasn’t Suzanne,” Meredith said.
4. SCAT
Alex came out of the small hallway that separated the living room from Maria’s room in the back. He found Meredith stretched out on his couch, an old blue plush one, threadbare but still comfortable. She had propped her bare feet on one padded arm of the couch. She was apparently studying her toes as she sipped from a glass of the Scotch, Glenfyddich, that she had carried back from London as a gift for Alex in November.
It was a prosaic gift, bought at the last minute in the duty-free shop, and Alex had suspected this was her way of saying she wasn’t sure yet whom she was coming back to. But then, Alex almost always found presents to be disappointments. What lurked inside the wrappings never lived up to the surrounding secrecy. He lifted her feet so he could sit, then let them back down, her legs on his lap. He traced patterns on one knee of her woolen slacks. He rubbed the toes of one bare foot with his other hand, waiting.
“Asleep?” Meredith asked.
“Yup. That was true? What you told us about Suzanne?”
“Of course.”
“She’s not dead?”
“Not dead, but apparently missing.”
Alex nodded. Meredith offered the glass, so he drank. “I’m glad,” he said. “But Trevisone is a homicide cop. Somebody has to be dead.”
Meredith took back the glass and drained it, not lifting her head. She stared someplace behind and above Alex, toward the oil paintings on the wall, though he knew that she couldn’t be seeing them at this angle. She pursed her lips, as if preparing a lecture. Alex would have leaned to kiss them, except that he was more interested in seeing them form words. Was that what a year did? he wondered. Just the facts, ma’am. He understood, also, that it might not be distaste that kept her from explaining. It might be the fact that telling him, now, was giving him a present that could meet his expectations.
In part, investigating a murder— or anything else that people tried to hide the truth of— was like fixing an engine. You took the mechanism apart until you could see each piece and how they all fit together, until you found the piece that did not work the way it should. But that was not the really compelling thing, and Alex knew it. The compelling thing was to try to understand the circumstances that led to untimely deaths. Call it a hobby; call it a way of answering questions for which doctors had no answers. Whatever it was, Alex knew it was a magnet for him now. Meredith knew that too. Once she began, she told the story clearly and without gaps.
“Natalie took an exit right off,” she began, “and turned back onto the highway going the other way, toward town. She drove us to Cedar Street, not four blocks from here. As soon as she turned the corner, we both saw a police car out in front. She sort of gasped and then smothered that, and then she parked at the beginning of the block. She said, ‘You better wait till I find out what this is about.’
“I waited in the car fifteen minutes, but Natalie didn’t come back. So then I went where she had gone, to the house with the police car in front. It was a regular two-family house. The postbox for the upstairs flat said ‘Mr. and Mrs. John Reilly’ and below that, on the same card, ‘Natalie Cooper.’ When I rang, someone buzzed me in. At the top of the stairs there was a policeman, whom I told I was looking for Natalie. He led me to the kitchen. They had put a sort of plastic shower-curtain affair over the parlor doorway. Natalie was in the kitchen. I said, ‘Suzanne?’ My voice had a crack in it, I suppose. The policeman looked at me sharply. Natalie shook her head, you know, as a sort of warning. ‘What’s in the parlor?’ I asked. The policeman looked at Natalie, like, ‘It’s your house, miss.’ ‘Scat Johnston,’ Natalie said. ‘A guy I knew. He’s stabbed. Somebody cut him. Officer, this is my professor Ms. Phillips. I called her earlier, to tell her I was worried about Suzanne disappearing. Ms. Phillips, I’m sorry I got you here at this time. It was really nice of you to come.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said. I turned to the policeman. ‘A man has been stabbed?’
‘“Dead,’ he said. He took out his notebook and asked for my whole name and address. He said Sergeant Trevisone was on his way and would probably want to bring us all down to the station. Trevisone took Natalie’s story first. Before she went off she thanked me again for coming. She said, ‘I’ll talk to you later.’ When my turn came I told Trevisone all about Saturday night. But I didn’t want to contradict Natalie, not yet, so I told him nothing about tonight except to parrot what Natalie said in the kitchen. I’m expecting that we’ll see Natalie here soon.”
Alex didn’t ask any more questions. Suzanne was not dead, not tonight, but somebody was. A guy Natalie Cooper knew, stabbed where Suzanne Lutrello was supposed to be. That was the observable trouble, like, “Yesterday it made a funny noise whenever I slowed down, and today it just won’t start.” All else was guesswork, so far. “A guy” was an unknown, an abstraction, a piece of a puzzle. He was already beyond feeling, beyond pain, before Alex became aware he’d ever lived or breathed. That was what Trevisone’s job must be like, day in and day out. But Alex also felt Suzanne’s fear. He wanted to know why she was missing, how much trouble she was in. The doorbell sounded, as if on cue. It rang again, and Meredith swiveled her legs off the arm of the couch and off Alex’s lap.
He listened to the front door open and close, to Natalie’s voice protesting that she couldn’t track ic
e into the house. When she and Meredith came into sight, Natalie was trying to say something else, but she kept breaking into silent tears.
Alex stood, awkwardly, as Natalie’s fingers rubbed past her eyes again and again, as if the tears could be erased. Meredith put an arm around the younger woman’s waist and then sat her in the armchair opposite the couch. Natalie was trying to keep her mouth in a straight line. She seemed to have put on fresh lipstick, a brighter color against the brown that was like rich soil or like some expensive, deeply colored wood. She was wearing black corduroys and a bright yellow turtleneck. Alex couldn’t remember, but he thought she’d had on something more subdued before.
“Natalie,” Meredith said, “would you like some tea, or a drink?”
Natalie kept wiping until she succeeded in drying her eyes. She looked at Alex. She asked, “Is it possible that you might have a J?”
“A jay?” Alex said, and then understood. It had been a while since he’d heard the term. He came back from his bedroom soon with the marijuana, lit, and a seashell that passed for an ashtray. Natalie took three measured puffs and handed the joint back to Alex. Alex inhaled deeply, enjoying the taste. He’d been more or less on the wagon, himself, since chemotherapy. He’d smoked a lot of weed during the chemo, using it as a medication, or rather as a counter to the other medications that left him raw in body and mind. Since then, he’d been giving his lungs a break. Now he breathed out, slowly, and sighed sort of the way Trevisone had done.
“Thanks,” Natalie said. “Professor Phillips, thank you, too.”
“Meredith,” Meredith said.
Alex said, “Alex,” for symmetry if nothing else.
Meredith added, “Nothing is going to stay secret for long.” She stopped, waited, and then said, “Alex has run into that sergeant before. Alex knows how to keep a secret while it lasts. He also has some experience in things like this.”
“Experience? He’s not a cop. I hope?”
“No. He’s a car mechanic. An honest one, by the way.”
“Most mechanics are honest, I think,” Natalie said. “I mean, as honest as lawyers or legislators or newspaper reporters. It’s just that educated people feel uptight around people who understand things they don’t.” Alex wasn’t sure this was entirely true, but he knew that he’d happily lie for Natalie from now on. “My stepfather used to be a mechanic,” she added. “He got less honest when he got into sales. That’s how I got to be buddies with Suzanne. On account of our stepfathers.”
Alex said, “They work together, selling cars?”
“No, they don’t know each other at all.” For the first time, Natalie laughed. It was an infectious laugh, but an unusual one. It was an old woman’s laugh.
“A little white girl from the suburbs and me, what we had in common was stepfathers nobody would expect. It came out in papers we had to write about our view of marriage, in class. Her mother married a black man. My mother married a white. She came up to me after. She said, ‘I forget your name, but you and me have got to talk.’ ”
Meredith perked up. It was as if she had let go of something, tossed it out to sea to let it drift where it would, and then a wave had washed it back to her. “Sarah Greenwood’s class,” she said. Natalie nodded. “She told me about the day that happened. It surprised her no end. I never knew it was Suzanne.”
“You’ll find out there was a lot you didn’t know about Suzanne.”
“Where were your parents?” Alex asked. He added carefully, “They weren’t home when this guy’s body was found?”
“They’re in Barbados. That’s where my mother is from. Scat, this guy, was kind of staying there for a few days.”
West Indian, Alex thought. So Indian was close in a way. Of course, there had been Indians in the Indies, Columbus had named both out of the same mistake. And why was he drifting like this, thinking about Columbus? Oh, it was the dope. Alex tried to focus in on the name Natalie had let drop.
Scat. Alex thought of scat singers, though he’d been under the impression that scatting was a female form. He wasn’t sure now who was in trouble, Natalie or Suzanne. He pictured a corpse that looked like that piano player, a trim black man with a thin mustache and rimless glasses, his formal white shirt slashed open and stained. “On Saturday night,” he said, “Suzanne left here suddenly. She told my daughter somebody was dead. I thought she might have meant somebody ought to be dead. This guy you knew, is that who she meant?”
Natalie picked up the joint, looked at it, put it down. She asked, “Did you tell the police about that comment?”
Alex and Meredith both nodded. “Yes,” Meredith admitted. “But about tonight I said what you said, that you called me because Suzanne still hadn’t turned up.”
“Oh shit,” was all Natalie replied, and then she reached for the joint again. Was she trying to relax, Alex wondered, or did the drug help her think? Probably she was thinking hard. Alex knew he would be doing that, in her situation. The problem was that he didn’t know what her situation was, or what she needed to be thinking about. “Well, the cat’s loose, for better or worse.” She looked at Alex. “What I mean is, she meant what she said. But they’ll think she meant what you said. Because Scat was her boyfriend. I mean, he was past tense even before tonight. She still saw him, though. Off and on.”
“Do you mean between other guys?”
This time Natalie mimed smoking the joint. She also mimed sniffing something up her nose.
“She still saw him,” Alex interpreted. “But only when she needed to buy.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Coke mostly. Sometimes pills. She was off the needle stuff for good, no thanks to him.”
“And… he was kind of staying with you now. Were you involved with him after Suzanne, is that what you mean?”
Natalie laughed the same laugh. “Who gets laid the most?” she asked. “Football players, acrobats, or mathematicians?”
“Acrobats?”
“No. Mathematicians. Three points.”
“I don’t get the joke,” Alex said.
“Three points. To a football player that’s a field goal. To an acrobat it’s when you stand on your hands and your head. To a mathematician it’s a triangle. The more you make everything into a triangle, the more you get laid. It’s a stupid joke, told by a math major, of course. But I think of it whenever somebody sees a triangle that’s not there. I was taking care of Scat to keep him away from Suzanne. I don’t hold with violence, but I won’t pretend to be real sorry he’s dead.”
“If I were a cop,” Alex said, “I’d be suspicious when somebody answered a question with a joke. You described Scat to Meredith as a guy you knew, not one that Suzanne knew. Was he an old friend, or an old boyfriend that maybe you introduced to Suzanne?”
Natalie smiled this time, but didn’t laugh or explain what was funny. “I think you’ve got the wrong idea about Scat,” she said finally. “But yeah, there is something in what you just said. Because I let him stay at my place this time, he got the wrong idea about me. It was the dope, I think. He didn’t usually do shit very often himself, but Saturday night he was fried, I don’t know what on. When I told him he had the wrong idea, he threatened me with a knife. The knife he got killed with, I think. Now I hope you won’t run and tell that to the cops.”
“What happened?” Alex asked.
“Oh, not much. Scat was a jerk a lot of the time, but no real rapist, I don’t think. I just locked myself in the bedroom and told him good night.” She looked at Meredith as if Meredith ought to believe her, even if Alex didn’t. “I didn’t see him between then and the time you and me got there tonight.”
“Well,” Meredith said. “Why did Suzanne leave Maria so suddenly that night? And what did she want me to help her with today? And where is she now?”
“I’m sorry. I really would like to tell you that, but that’s Suzanne’s affair, not mine. I can tell you that she didn’t kill Scat. Shit. She’d have killed him years ago if murder was in her mind. She ran away b
ecause she knew they’d blame her, or because she’s running from whoever did.”
Right, Alex thought. Exactly. But… “Who do you mean when you keep saying ‘they’? Do you mean just Trevisone, the cops, or do you mean somebody else?”
The laugh came once more, but this time Natalie stifled it. She wasn’t an old woman, and didn’t have the knack yet of laughing at danger. “You think Scat Johnston is some no-account representative of the minority colored underclass, am I right? No. We are talkin’ about Lowell Johnston, a no-account representative of the minority Brahmin aristoclass. When I got home, the cops already knew who they had there, stuck with more holes than the junkies that were his customers, bled to death all over my folks’ rug. They had somebody that they were supposed to act like he was a fine young man, somebody that had folks who are like rich, WASP, Brattle Street types. And the Johnstons always blamed ‘that mixed-up little Italian girl’ for their boy going bad.”
“My friend Trevisone,” Alex said, “might not take that mixed-up Italian bullshit too much to heart.”
“Now that Scat’s dead,” Natalie answered, “the Johnstons are going to want blood for blood, and the blood they want ain’t gonna be blue. Your friend Trevisone may know the score, but you know he can’t make the rules. So listen. I’m not asking you to take my word for anything. Just— if she gets back in touch, give her a chance to explain before you decide who you ought to be telling what.”
* * *
When Natalie left, Meredith said she needed a hot bath before anything else. Alex sat at his kitchen counter for a while, doodling question marks and likenesses of Suzanne Lutrello on a pad of phone-message paper. Then he dropped these in a drawer of the small desk he’d built when he redid the room. The apartment had two bedrooms, neither very large, a living room, and this showpiece kitchen Alex had crafted. It was a good size for two people, not so good maybe for three. He slid the drawer shut and followed Meredith to find out what she was thinking now. Her eyes were closed, her head buried in the spray from the hand-held nozzle as she washed the police station smells out of her hair. Alex watched the water run down her back.
