by Dick Cluster
“Hurts,” she said. “Wicked bad.” She closed her eyes and sagged against her rescuers’ support.
“Hold her up.” Anne said. “Don’t move her. I’ll call the ambulance.” Alex remembered that Anne had mentioned being trained as a nurse. You didn’t have to go to college for it in those days, she’d said. It had been in one of the conversations where she’d expressed the hope that Alex would someday find a way to finish school. She didn’t work now, but Alex took comfort from the fact that she ought to know what to do.
“No ambulance,” Suzanne pleaded suddenly. “You take me. No ambulance. No cops.”
Anne Lafarge only threw her a practiced, motherly, disapproving look. She shifted the weight of Suzanne’s body to Alex and hurried inside to phone. Alex held Suzanne up while trying to let the injured shoulder alone.
“Are you bleeding?” he asked. What he meant was, had somebody stabbed her, shot her, was there any other injury he couldn’t see?
Suzanne forced a smile. “No,” she said. “Fell on it. Maybe broken. But that’s all. I can walk, if you help me.” Her eyelids drooped again, but she forced them open. “We got to go. Alex. Now. Help me up. No cops, please.”
She put her good arm around his shoulders, and he wrapped both of his arms around her waist. He raised her up, slowly, until he felt her legs begin to take some of the weight.
“You got a car?” she said. She gasped again, but didn’t groan or cry. Maybe it’s not broken, Alex thought. Maybe it’s only bruised.
“Most of one. Can you walk?”
“Walk,” she said.
Bent over, step by step, Alex helped her across the porch and down the steps. He heard a storm door open and slam behind them.
“I said don’t move her,” Anne’s voice commanded.
Alex put Suzanne in the passenger seat, threw his landlady a puzzled and helpless look, and drove off. He felt like a thief stealing a baby from a hospital ward. He thought the police would feel that way about him too. He stopped and tucked his coat over her like a bib, and turned the heater on full blast. Still, the wind was going to pour in through the hole he widened in the windshield. Now it looked as if a basketball had gone through the glass.
“A hospital,” he said. “You need to get that looked at. If the circulation got cut off, you could have frostbite too.”
“No cops,” she repeated. Alex thought of the note resting in the glove compartment. He had a lot of questions to ask her. In the end, if he couldn’t talk her into turning herself in, he might have to do it himself. The first thing, though, was her arm.
“Okay,” he promised, “just doctors.” Up till that moment he had forgotten he had to call a doctor of his own. What was wrong with him was invisible, if indeed there was anything wrong. But suppose he had to check in for a biopsy tomorrow, and subject himself to “more aggressive forms of treatment” after that? How was he going to take care of a daughter and a fugitive from justice then? He banged out more of the broken glass.
“Not here,” Suzanne said. “Someplace farther out.”
Not too far, Alex thought. He compromised. “Middlesex Memorial is supposed to be okay.”
Suzanne nodded in a resigned way. Alex did the best he could on the twists and turns of the Alewife Brook Parkway, but he could tell she was bracing herself against the pain, trying not to show it. She didn’t ask about the window, or explain anything, and this was not the time to press her to talk. Alex followed the parkway, which followed the Alewife Brook to its confluence with the Mystic River and then downstream.
WHAT FISH HAS A MILLION SQUARE FEET? the promotional billboard near Alex’s house riddled the commuter traffic on the parkway. ALEWIFE CENTER. LEASING NOW, it answered itself. An alewife was a small fish, and it gave its name to the waterway and now the subway terminus and a mammoth four-story garage. Beyond the station were new office parks, and soon these would be joined by twice as many offices, a hotel, and a mall. A connection that had been vague suddenly became clearer. Scat’s mother, somebody Pepperell Johnston. The ski resort, Pepperell Woods. Development, land, property— was that somehow what these deaths would turn out to be about?
Past Medford Square, Alex turned onto Interstate 93 heading north— toward New Hampshire, where the explanation of one death, maybe two, ought to be. But he left the highway after a mile, where it bisected the rocky hills known as the Middlesex Fells. This land was a public reservation, immune to development for the moment at least. He slowed down on the winding park road. A couple carrying cross-country skis emerged from the woods. The skiers’ dog leaped onto the road. Alex braked sharply and Suzanne said, “Oww. Jesus.”
“Almost there,” he said. “Listen, Suzanne. Did you know the woman Scat hit?” Seeing the skiers, he couldn’t help but ask. “Caroline Davis. Did you know anything about her?”
“Uh-uh. Except it wasn’t an accident. I know that. That’s why somebody wanted Scat dead. I just haven’t got any proof.”
Back to square one, Alex thought. Okay, the first thing was Suzanne’s arm. The hospital emerged around a bend, pleasant, surrounded by the woods. The emergency room wasn’t busy, surprisingly, and they took Suzanne as soon as her paper work was done. She swore she’d pay Alex back, but she didn’t want to use her real name, and anyway she insisted she didn’t have her ID. She said she was Sharon Smith, and Alex vouched for her, signing on enough dotted lines to satisfy the intake clerk that the hospital could always come after him. Just stepping into the ER and seeing an M.D., the fee schedule said, would cost a hundred fifty bucks. Alex hoped that qualified as “expenses” on Rosemarie Sturgeon Davis’s account. A man in a white coat gently lifted Suzanne’s arm by the bicep and turned it this way and that. He asked her to scream as loud as she wanted to when it hurt the most. She groaned but didn’t scream. The intern, or whoever he was, told Alex it was probably a dislocated shoulder. He looked at Suzanne’s hands and face. Had she been outside, skiing or something? he asked.
Suzanne said, “Something,” and the man in white frowned and took her away through swinging doors. Alex looked around for a pay phone. There were two, mounted on the wall, not in booths, at the angle of two rows of plastic chairs. A sign hanging from the ceiling said WAITING AREA. Both phones were in use, so Alex stood and waited. That was what a waiting area was for.
“…ten stitches,” he tuned in to the man in front of him saying. “And he’ll be in a cast three months. He’ll need to lie in the backseat to get home.” He tried to tune in on the woman at the other phone. “…false labor…” he made out. But the woman obviously wasn’t pregnant. She was stuffed into a tight ski-slope-style windbreaker, high heels, tight jeans. Either she was talking about some other kind of labor, or she was talking about somebody else. Then the man who was talking about the cast hung up. Alex moved in on the phone, picked up the receiver to claim it, but didn’t drop his dime in yet.
“…with her luck, she’ll have the kid in the car on the way home. What? I don’t know. I’ll put her to bed and hope the contractions are gone by tomorrow so she can go to school.” It dawned on Alex that this was the grandmother-to-be, that here was the national problem of Teenage Pregnancy right before his eyes.
The woman on the phone turned and stared at him. Her face was lined but tight, her lips twisted just a little, her arched eyebrows seeming to ask him something. Her jacket said freestyle in silver script over each breast. She puffed rapidly on a cigarette, not inhaling. Then she said, “Yeah, I hope so,” and hung up, still staring at Alex as if he’d been following her, or blaming her, or checking her out in a way that demanded some response. He said, “Good luck. I have a daughter, too.” The woman didn’t answer, but she smiled and shrugged as she went past. Alex took three deep breaths and dropped in a dime and dialed. A recorded message told him it would cost thirty more cents to reach that number from here. Alex followed orders. The clinical assistant said, “Oncology. Can you hold please,” and gave him over to the Muzak without waiting for an answer. Alex said yes anyw
ay. The grandmother-to-be sat down.
“Yes, please, who were you waiting for?” said the voice on the phone.
“This is Alex Glauberman,” Alex said. “I’m calling for a test result. Is Dr. Wagner still in?”
“Dr. Wagner is with a patient. Would you like to hold?”
“That depends. Can you see if you have the result, or if she left a message for me?”
“Hold on, please, I’ll check.” He was delivered over to the pacifying string orchestra again. The tune was “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” though all the life and meaning were drained out. Alex looked around at the people waiting for good or bad news. If it was good, they’d forget being here, forget the details. If it was bad, they might remember everyone, everything. What would he remember? Dionne Warwick? That musical lament about a future that never came?
“Alex.” His doc sounded chipper, maybe a bit breathless though. Shit, Alex thought, I don’t want to take any more motherfucking drugs. But he gave himself credit for that thought. It was honest. It was to the point. It was not Don’t tell me I’m going to die. “Your second tests were all fine,” she said. He could hear her catching her breath. So she had been worried, and she’d hurried to the phone from somewhere, to reassure him herself. “It was just the leukocyte level that concerned me. It was on the very low end of normal the first time around. But not the second. So. I think we can assume it was all a false alarm. The lab is under a lot of pressure, mistakes happen, we’ll assume that’s what this was. But why don’t you come in after one month instead of two, just to be sure?”
“Okay,” Alex said. He didn’t see the point of calling something a normal range if the low end raised so many suspicions, but now was no time to care about that.
“I’m sorry if you got fearful,” she said. “But a stitch in time saves nine. So. Relieved?”
“Yes,” Alex said. “Thanks. Yes, relieved.”
“Okay. ’Bye, then.”
“Okay. ’Bye.”
Alex hung up the phone. He was more than relieved, he was ready to jump in the air and kick his feet. Yet he was also a little bit let down. It was that feeling of gearing up for something you turn out not to have to face. Not right then, anyway. It was the same feeling he’d attributed to Graham Johnston that morning. Had the letdown somehow contributed to his later fury— set off, perhaps, by seeing Alex’s car still insolently waiting outside his house? Or, Alex thought for the first time, had it maybe not been Graham Johnston at all? It had to be someone who’d been there in the Johnston house, unless someone else had been following him, waiting for a chance. He called Bernie’s office and kept demanding attention until Bernie’s very brusque voice sounded in his ear.
“What, Alex? I’m up to my ass. What?”
“You got my message last night?”
“Yeah. I know some stuff. Architect, development, real estate. Lawyer, artist. I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
“Graham Johnston’s son Lowell was murdered Monday night. A suspect fled and is being looked for. I’ve got the suspect with me. Now we’re both being looked for, probably. We both need a lawyer. And Maria’s been threatened, indirectly at least. So I need to see you, the suspect and I need to see you, as soon as we can.”
“Alex— oh fuck it, never mind. I’ll try to be out of here in half an hour. Where?”
‘‘I’ll call back and leave a message. Thanks Bernie.”
“You shouldn’t be getting mixed up in this,” Bernie said, but Alex heard grudging admiration through the advice. Maybe because of it, Bernie hung up without saying good-bye. Alex smiled as he sat down in an orange plastic chair. Two phone calls, and things were looking much better. He wanted to share his relief with Meredith, but that was hard because he hadn’t had a chance to share his problem. The freestyle woman moved to sit next to him. “So what happened to your daughter’s arm?” she said.
“What?”
“I saw you bring her in. I saw the way she was holding her arm.”
“Oh God,” Alex said. “Do I really look old enough to be her father?”
“Sorry to tell you so,” the woman said, then winked. “She’s sure as hell too young to be your wife.”
“I’m divorced,” Alex said. “But you’re right. My girlfriend is ten years older than her. What about you?” He had already looked for a ring on her finger, so he knew it wasn’t there.
“Yeah. Divorced. Maybe it’s simpler today. They don’t bother to get married.”
“What’s going to happen about the baby?”
“Bring it up together, I guess. Hope that our two heads make a better mother than one.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the swinging doors. Alex turned to see Suzanne walking out, looking about warily. The right sleeve of her sweater dangled empty, limp. “So just tell me. Who’s that— if she’s not your daughter, not your girlfriend, and not your wife?”
Alex looked back and forth between the freestyle woman and the one with her arm in a sling. He could imagine going off with the woman next to him, disappearing for an hour or a day, comparing their lives. He wouldn’t be responsible for her, nor she for him. He was, all of a sudden, responsible for Suzanne. “Are those the only choices?” he asked.
The woman winked again. “They used to be,” she said. “Maybe not now. You tell me.”
9. VIOLENT FEMMES
Suzanne waved jauntily with her good arm, but gave the woman next to Alex a stony and suspicious look. Alex walked over to Suzanne, slowly, asking himself whom he saw. A lively woman, in her early twenties, in cowboy boots with wooden heels, bleached jeans below a long sweater, black, down over her hips. Maria had once told him these jeans were called acid-washed, to distinguish them from stone-washed, which had a more lived-in, less fashionable look. The word seemed to mean like sulfuric or nitric again, apparently; acid meaning lysergic was gone.
Suzanne’s hair was styled for exuberance, but her face was what he’d said to Trevisone: alert. She looked as though she liked fun but not nonsense. There was no giggle and no pout in her rather delicate lips, no freckles and no dimples in her round cheeks. Just a natural face, no longer very innocent or very young. She was short, as he’d remembered, and solid, but not at all fat. The jeans were tight around nice calves and thighs. Her hidden arm made a funny bulge above her waist.
“Feel better?” Alex asked.
“Believe it. It just hurt like hell when they popped it back in. It’s in a sling now, under here. I got to rest it, that’s all, so it won’t pop out again. They say I’m stuck in the sling for a couple months. I guess you want me to explain some things.”
“That’s right. But I called a lawyer, a good friend. I want you to tell it to him while you’re telling it to me. If either of us gets busted, I want him to already know what’s going on.”
“What about Professor Phillips?”
“No. Though I am going to call her, after. We need to pick a place to meet the lawyer. I’ve got a spare windshield in my shop. Before we run into any rain or snow, I’d like to put it in. My shop has got no windows, itself, by the way. Nobody would know anybody was there.”
“Uh-uh. They might search it. That lady— she would have called the cops, right?”
“Anne. She owns the house. She might not. But she wouldn’t cover for me if they came to her.”
“So they know I’m with you. Can you get your lawyer to meet us at the Burlington Mall?”
“I guess. Why there?”
Suzanne laughed. “It’s close to Billerica.” Pronounced Bill-ricka, like a street in a new housing development named after the builder’s children, the next town from Burlington was actually the site of the Middlesex County jail. “No, seriously, my brother Tommy works in the record store there. I want him with us too.”
“What about my windshield?”
Suzanne pointed through the glass double doors. She said, “It’ll be dark in ten minutes. Right now it’s not snowing or raining. And no cops’ll be able to see it, so they won’t pull you o
ver.” Right, Alex thought. The shortest days of winter were gone, but it still got dark before five. He also thought she had everything figured out too well.
“What if I hadn’t come home when I did? What if Anne had found you, without me?”
“Yeah,” Suzanne said. “There was a record they used to play for us, in music-appreciation class in junior high. Peter and the Wolf, you know the one I mean? The grandfather comes on in the end, in this deep, deep voice. He says, ‘What if Peter had not caught the wolf? What then?’ Look. Suppose the cops are calling hospitals, asking if anybody like me has been brought in by anybody like you. Call your lawyer friend. Tell him the Town Meeting in the mall, he should look for us at one of the tables on the side.”
On the highway, things were crowding up. The cracked glass glowed red from the taillights of the traffic, homeward bound. Alex squinted into the wind, bitter now, that tore at his eyes and whistled in his hair. Too late, he remembered he had a pair of safety glasses in his toolbox in the trunk. Suzanne, for all the tough talk, huddled by the passenger door, withdrawn into herself, covering her face with her free hand. Alex was glad he had a beard to do that. He turned on the radio and got National Public Radio news. He pushed the next button, which gave him the late-afternoon reggae music show instead. He preferred both the music’s politics and its sound. So did Suzanne, apparently. She began to bob her head, a little bit, in time.
At Route 128, Alex turned west. The wind wasn’t so bad there, because in rush hour the traffic always crawled. The road was three or four decades old and could no longer handle the flow of cars. Back in the suburbs, Alex thought. Back in the building boom.
The old boom, he corrected himself. Today’s boom was in the city, as the middle-class migration imploded and industry, in the form of high-tech and services, followed. It was a cycle. It was happening everywhere. He noticed it all the time in the watershed of the Mystic that he was now leaving behind. A river valley— no bridges, no pavement, no highway, no brick— a fertile river valley was what the first settlers would have seen. Alex knew— because Meredith had learned it from Puritan chronicles— that a female Indian chief known to the English as the Squaw Sachem had once reigned along the Mystic. Her people’s land had become settlers’ farms, then shipyards and docks, then factories, and each year now more and more of the factories were gone. The Schraffts plant where Suzanne’s mother had worked was all condos now. The Ford plant that had once assembled Edsels was a shopping mall. So was the drive-in movie near where Alex had turned from Alewife Brook Parkway onto I-93.The old jobs had disappeared, but somebody made a lot of money turning the old into the new.
