Compound Fractures

by Stephen White

  “I know. God. I know I’m being set up. I assume Raoul told Cozy about his affair with Lauren as a way of protecting Diane, specifically as a way to provide an alternate theory to Elliot about why the shooting happened. Diane becomes witness instead of perpetrator. When Cozy suggested to Elliot that he consider widening the pool of potential suspects to include me, I imagine Elliot could not have been happier to oblige.”

  “Because you’ve been married to a prosecutor I am going to lay this out like I would to another lawyer. That morning?” The fact that Kirsten used my coded phrase for that awful day caused my diaphragm to seize. “Elliot’s minions will argue you had motive and opportunity. The searches that were just done at your house? He was trying to lock down means, as well, by trying to find that gun in your possession.”

  “He didn’t find the gun.”

  She shrugged. “They’ll make a case you had it. And that you ditched it. If they come up with a good narrative it can be almost as effective.”

  “MOM?” Means, Opportunity, Motive.

  “Yes, Alan. MOM.” She sighed. “They say there’s a storm coming. Tomorrow night.”

  “When the weather is as nice as it’s been? It seems we always pay.”

  Kirsten gave me a hug at the door. I could feel her spread the fingers of each of her hands as she pressed them against my back. She turned her head sideways, leaning her body into mine. I could smell her hair.

  You’re seeing someone, I thought.

  My car smelled of potstickers. I lost Kirsten’s scent in that scent before I crossed Pearl.

  47

  THE KIDS FELT ABANDONED. The dogs wanted a walk. Clare was late to meet her boyfriend to go to a club I didn’t know existed—some speakeasy-conceit in the basement of a nondescript storefront on Broadway that grownups like me were unlikely to notice. I was beginning to feel old in Boulder. That could not be a good thing.

  I pondered the myriad ways my kids would take advantage of it going forward.

  Mostly Grace. It wouldn’t be pretty.

  Clare drove away with my gratitude, a vegetarian bao, and a bonus twenty in her pocket. I set out food for the kids. I was tempted to sit back and watch Grace’s chopstick performance—she’d been practicing her skills on dry cereal—but the dogs needed out.

  Before I got Fiji’s leash, and despite a caution to myself not to be looking for trouble, I detoured to the tables in the master bedroom where Sofie had sorted Lauren’s clothing. Other than my hissy fit with the shoe boxes, I had not disturbed Sofie’s work.

  I felt compelled to prove Amanda right or to prove Amanda wrong. I was on the prowl for silk stockings I was determined not to find.

  Lauren’s underwear was neatly folded and placed in a large rectangular plastic bin. Right next to a surprisingly varied selection of panties was a small pile of tights and stockings. Next to them, beneath Lauren’s bras, I found two garter belts.

  I stared at the garter belts as though they didn’t belong. Huh. I would remember my wife wearing a garter belt. I did not remember ever seeing one on her.

  I was aware that I could suddenly hear my own pulse. The thready pop-pop-pop was accelerating in my ears.

  Most of the tights were familiar. A few caused a twinge of sadness associated with a specific memory. On top of the stack of tights but below two pairs of unopened pantyhose, Sofie had placed a solitary pair of sheer hose. The stockings were dark in tone, but transparent. My pulse continued to race as I unfolded the wispy fabric with a reverence I didn’t try to comprehend. Without conscious volition, my left hand entered one stocking and the tip of my right index finger traced a raised seam all the way to the heel.

  I had not seen the back-seam stockings before. Ever. Not on her. Not off her.

  “Find the back-seam stockings,” Amanda had said. “Your doubt will go away.”

  I felt as though I were in freefall. I had been clutching doubt as though it were the rip cord on a parachute. My only protection against annihilation.

  The back-seam stockings obliterated my denial. The reaction I felt holding them was instantaneous and chemical. My doubt had allowed me a modicum of uncertainty. The uncertainty had allowed me hope. Without hope?

  My anguish felt gruesome. I was feeling again the incongruous agony that accompanied a compound fracture of my heart.

  I had lost Lauren, I knew, long before I had lost her.

  EMILY AND FIJI DIDN’T get the walk they wanted, but they got what they needed. When I returned with the dogs Gracie was dancing in the family room and Jonas had retreated to the basement to write code. The last six times I had asked him to tell me about the code he was writing he’d replied, “It’s for a game.” I couldn’t read code. He may have been being truthful with me but I was unable to kick a nagging suspicion that Jonas was messing around with hacking. I couldn’t prove it. I had no doubt he had the skill to hack. I wasn’t sure if he had the inclination.

  He pulled a bud from his left ear when he sensed that I had walked up behind him. The one ear was all of Jonas’s attention that I was going to get. I was grateful for it. The music was the by-then familiar early Feist, but he was listening to a song I’d never heard before that was sad and upbeat all at once. I put my hands on his shoulders and told him how brave he was. How proud I was of him.

  And I told him that I hoped he wasn’t hacking.

  He didn’t stop pecking out lines of code to respond to me. But, as I retreated to leave him to what gave him solace, he said, “I didn’t know how much handcuffs hurt.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. You okay?” He had long sleeves covering his wrists. I asked to see them.

  He didn’t show me. He said, “I’m good, Dad. You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I handed him an envelope from that day’s mail. “My friend? The old Italian guy you met? He sent some more Powerball tickets. Will you check them against the drawing?” Carl had been sending me ten entries a week.

  I thought I knew why. Carl had been into amends. The entries into the Powerball lottery were part of his amends. His mea culpa. I suspected Kirsten was getting some, too.

  Jonas pulled the small sheet with the numbers from the envelope. He barely glanced at it before he declared, “Sorry. No winners.”

  “You know the winning numbers?”

  Jonas was not a romantic. He said, “No, Dad. I know the odds.”

  48

  I USED THE LANDLINE IN my bedroom—it was a blocked number—to call Diane.

  Occasionally I felt the urge to call her to learn how she was doing. To reconnect.

  That time I called to ask her why. Not to reconnect.

  The call went straight to voicemail. I hung up.

  SAM WAS SITTING ALONE on the deck outside the doublewide. He should not have been able to sit comfortably outside on a March evening, but the night was still, the air mild. I thought he might be waiting for me.

  The moon was at half, as though it had been sliced along its axis by a celestial chef with knife skills. Lunar light illuminated ribbons of clouds that sunset had left behind, the nearby Flatirons backlit by the spectacle.

  “I was hoping for a beer,” Sam said as I approached. He’d spied the bottle I was carrying in one hand and the two glasses I had in the other. “Some new local delight you discovered from a brewery that’s been open for like a fortnight. Do Boulder’s hipster brewers mark time in fortnights? Is that old enough to be new again?”

  I said, “Maybe the ones that make mead. No. I think that’s a honey moon.”

  Sam said, “I think a honey moon is a fortnight.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  Sam made a who-the-fuck-cares sound with his lips. “We’re drinking hard stuff?”

  “It’s been a whiskey kind of day, Sam.”

  “Good days, bad days, they’re all beer days for me. Keeps life simple.”

  “Your life is simple?”

  Sam’s laugh came from his belly. The sound waves rippled through the valley in a way that probably interfered with
my neighbors’ satellite reception. Emily was not pleased. I heard her bark a reply to Sam’s guffaw from behind the front door. He asked, “Are we doing shots?”

  “This is a civilized sit-down. We’re going to sip whiskey neat. And talk.”

  Sam didn’t miss the absurdity. “We’re sitting on plastic chairs that Ophelia got on sale at Target on a temporary deck that’s at best quasi-attached to a used doublewide that wasn’t nice even when it was brand-new. But we’re going to be proper gentlemen, drinking civilized-like, sipping whiskey from real-glass glasses?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “I assume this is top-shelf hooch worthy of the elevated circumstances.”

  “It is.” I poured. I said, “I want to start this off with a thank-you. A sincere one.” I raised my glass. “For rescuing my kid.”

  He graciously touched my glass with the rim of his. We sipped.

  “Next,” I said. “That gun? The one you were sure wasn’t in my house? I would like to hear about that.”

  My tracker vibrated. The intrusion was untimely, but mobile phones—at least mine—rarely wormed their way into my awareness at opportune moments. In another phase of my life I might have ignored the buzz. Not in the phase of my life I was living. Too fraught. It turned out the buzz was for a text I could ignore.

  My gf met a guy who got us a room @ Little Nell. Too cool!!!!! adi

  Sam said, “Important?”

  I intended for it to be an evening of honesty between Sam and me. I said, “Remember the beguiler?”

  It took him five seconds. “From LA? The fucking beguiler?”

  “She’s in Aspen.”

  “Good town for her. Place is full of fucking beguilers.” He looked at me sideways, his eyeballs distorted by the amber in his glass. “Don’t, Alan. Do not.”

  I didn’t want Sam’s advice about caution with LA Amy. Sam had gone off the relationship reservation more often than anyone I knew. He was not someone to whom I looked for wisdom about erotic restraint.

  I did wish I could tell him about the wound that had pierced my heart from Lauren’s involvement with Raoul, but my determination to be honest didn’t include enough trust to be truthful with Sam about all things. I did not trust him with the back-seam stockings.

  I had an agenda. I got back to it. I raised one finger. “The gun? You knew I had it.” I raised a second finger. “And you knew it wasn’t in the house. How? And how?”

  He wasn’t surprised by my line of inquiry. He said, “We’ll start with number two. I knew where it wasn’t because I’d already searched your house. In fact, when I didn’t find the gun the first time, I went back and searched a second time. I’m good, by the way. When people—cop people, prosecutor people—are planning a difficult search, they choose me. I got instincts. I knew the gun wasn’t in the house because I checked twice.

  “Before we go back to number one, you probably also want to know about the why. Why I searched your house. Yes?”

  I preferred the illusion that I had some control. I said, “No, first we’ll do number one. Then we can come back to the why. But first, you should have my new phone number.” I showed Sam my cheap phone and offered him a sticky note with the digits.

  “You finally got a burner.” He raised his eyebrows. “It’s your whiskey. But number one and the why are nearly the same thing.”

  The door to the trailer opened behind us. Ophelia walked into the evening carrying a ceramic platter so heavy it required both her hands. She said, “Hi, Alan, good to see you. I still adore your children.”

  It was one of her standard greetings. I said, “It’s good to see you, too, Ophelia. I still adore them, too.” She placed the platter, deep with crushed ice, on a low table, in the process exposing swell and curve and skin and, yes, pale areolae and soft nipples. I averted my eyes as I would from a solar eclipse.

  I wasn’t sure why I looked away. Some Catholic reflex. Ophelia was far from shy about displaying her breasts. Sam was getting used to it. Jonas had adjusted. It was my shit. On the list of things I was working on, I had managed to shove it near the bottom.

  “A snack,” she said. “For you boys.”

  “Some whiskey, Ophelia?” I said. “It’s fine.”

  “Another time, but thank you. That’s a pretty sky tonight. Enjoy.”

  Sam said, “Thanks, babe.” He put a big hand on her ass as she departed. She danced her way through the flimsy door.

  The crushed ice was covered with oysters.

  “Kumamotos,” Sam said.

  You could have knocked me off the chair with a strong fart.

  49

  REALLY,” I SAID. Sam had said Kumamotos. I would not have been more surprised had he asked for my thoughts about escaping the liquidity trap. I topped off the whiskey in our glasses to camouflage my befuddlement.

  “You eat raw oysters now?” The Sam I knew didn’t eat raw vegetables.

  “Ophelia. What can I say? She gets a bushel delivered by FedEx. Who knew? With a little champagne vinegar and shallots? These things are delicious. I could eat ’em all day. I’m even learning how to shuck. O’s a pro but I’m getting there. Hardly cut myself at all anymore.” Sam smiled as he displayed a healing wound on his oyster-holding hand. “I’m becoming a raw bar guy. I know, I know. Sushi? O thinks I’ll come around. She wants me to take her to Sushi Zanmai for her birthday.”

  Sam had just said the word shallots in a sentence without sarcasm. Sam knew how to shuck. He was anticipating eating sushi.

  “Know what else we do? O and I?” I braced myself for some unwelcome sexual sharing. “She’s a member at the Boedecker. Turns out art films aren’t all about French people with their heads up their asses.”

  I was afraid I might say the wrong thing to him about the Boedecker or the Kumamotos. Ophelia had become Sam’s tour guide into an alternate universe that had no neighborhoods that even approximated the ones of his youth on the Iron Range.

  I took an oyster to keep my mouth occupied; it was sweet and fruity and the vinegar and shallots cut the brine to a perfect salinity. Sam spooned some vinegar and squeezed some lemon onto two and slurped them down in stereo.

  I tried to savor the moment but Sam collapsed my moment-savoring as though he had taken a leaf blower to a house of cards. “Back to number one? The night Lauren was shot I was in the ICU when you came back from your little night-fire errand. You had a semiautomatic in the waistband of the scrubs you were wearing. For future reference? Great way to lose a nut. Two nuts. Hell, a whole damn scrotum.

  “But you’d had the bad day to end all bad days, so I prayed the safety was on and there was nothing in the chamber, and I let it go. Later I watched you bury the gun in the plastic bag with all the bloody stuff from the ER. I figured the bag ended up here and that the gun was someplace in the house that wouldn’t be hard to find.”

  I interrupted. “You knew it was that gun? The one Diane used?”

  “Seventy-thirty. Maybe eighty-twenty.” He paused. “It was, right?”

  “Yeah. Go on. Trying to get a read on your thinking.”

  “We both know it’s better than yours. Do you want to tell me how you ended up with the gun?”

  “Probably not a good idea, Sam. Some laws may have been broken. I should have turned it in. I was not at my best.”

  “You think? Anyway, the why? I’d been hearing drumbeats about a search. I didn’t think it would go well for you if Elliot found the weapon that shot Lauren stashed in your house. So I decided to be proactive.”

  It was a fine time for me to offer some gratitude. I didn’t. That Sam had a pristine motive to search my house didn’t mean his only motive to search my house was pristine. “You knew a search was coming?” The words left my brain as a question but they exited my mouth as an accusation.

  Sam deflected me without rancor. “No. I heard a search might be coming. You used to be a good listener, Alan. I could rely on you to recognize nuance.”

  I opened my mouth to argue. I grabbed
an oyster instead. After it raced down my throat I asked, “Why didn’t you tell me to get rid of the gun?” I knew the answer before I finished the question. Sam wouldn’t trust me to keep his name out of it if a future push brought an interrogatory shove. That trust thing again. I said, “Never mind.”

  Sam waited for me to catch up with myself. He said, “Look.” He lifted his glass to toast the western sky. “The moon is about to disappear exactly into Eldorado Canyon. See how it fits? Amazing.”

  The moon was sliding into the cleft of Eldorado like a handgun into a holster.

  “You know about Ivy Baldwin?” Sam asked. “Eldorado?”

  “No. Who is she?” I asked.

  “She’s a he. A dead he. You really don’t know? Back when Eldorado Springs was a big deal resort in the early 1900s, with the trolley from Denver and the hotels and the dance halls and everything— You know about that, right?”

  I nodded but my assent was quasi-skeptical. I had heard the Eldorado-Springs-as-Coney-Island tales since I’d first arrived in Boulder. The contemporary Eldorado was a sleepy and quiet not-quite village with an old natural springs–fed pool up near the entrance to a splendid State Park with legendary routes for rock climbers.

  The Coney Island of the Rockies? Not exactly. Hell, not even close.

  Ivy Baldwin’s name didn’t ring any bells, but I guessed that Sam was reflecting on that earlier incarnation of Eldorado Springs, the one that purportedly attracted hordes of the trendy for summer holidays, and honeymooners like Ike and Mamie Eisenhower. I was a cynic about the lore. I believed the old Eldorado tales were a quarter apocryphal, a quarter urban legend, and a third true. The balance was a blend of the random variance and statistical noise inevitably associated with things Boulder.

  But Sam had a story to tell. His kindness to my son and the Kumamotos and the Boedecker had earned him some slack. I said, “Please. Tell me.”

  “Ivy Baldwin was a daredevil type who walked a high wire across Eldorado Canyon for the tourists’ amazement and amusement.”

  I looked at the canyon. I looked at Sam. “Across the canyon? That canyon?” I pointed. “On a tightrope? No way.”