Seven Suspects

by Renee James

  “Is Roberta okay?” Betsy doesn’t say hello or engage in small talk. When my number comes up in her caller ID, she fears the worst.

  “She’s fine,” I say. “She’s with your parents. It’s Sunday afternoon here.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” She exhales a sigh of relief.

  “Guess where we are right now,” Betsy says. She shifts gears fast. She must be having a great time.

  “Making mad, passionate love in an illicit hotel in Pigalle.” I’m trying to be funny.

  “That’s later, silly,” she says. There is a smile in her voice that stretches from ear to ear. I’m glad for her, but a little jealous, too. “We’re doing a progressive dinner along the Seine.”

  That stops me for a minute. She is describing a dining ritual that we practiced as man and wife in Paris years ago. Whenever we recall that trip, that’s the first memory that comes to the fore. I’m glad for her, but sad that one of the moments of our life together is being eclipsed by a newer memory that doesn’t include me.

  “Bobbi?” My silence has alarmed her.

  “Still here,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Betsy says.

  “What way?” I ask.

  “That it’s better than our time here.” The woman is a mind reader, even thousands of miles away.

  “I hope it is better,” I say. “I mean, even better. I want you to have the time of your life.”

  “Thank you,” she says, softly.

  She changes the subject. “So, are you just checking up on me?”

  “Uh, no.” I stumble a little, trying to get into the message. “It’s just . . .” I have to pause again. “Betsy, someone is stalking me. I’m not sure who it is or what they’re after, but I don’t want to put Roberta at risk.”

  “Oh no, Bobbi!” Her exclamation is heartfelt. She knows what happened last time I had a stalker. It shouldn’t happen to anyone even once in a lifetime, let alone twice. She asks for details. This conversation is going to cost us both a fortune, but I sketch it out for her.

  “Do you think your parents could keep her until this gets resolved?” I ask.

  “God, Bobbi, you must be desperate,” she says. Good. She’s being humorous.

  “You can’t imagine,” I say. “But they could stay in the city and get Roberta to school okay, and I can’t think of any other way to do that.”

  The Hitlers have a timeshare condo in Chicago, even though this city represents everything that’s wrong in their America. But their daughter and granddaughter live here, and even the Hitlers sometimes want to see a concert or go to a play. So they found themselves an oasis of mostly white and totally rich people north of the Loop, where they hunker down a half-dozen times a year. They won’t be using public transportation to get Roberta to school—way too much exposure to poor people—but they’ll get her there and get her home safely.

  Betsy agrees with me. “Shall I call them?” she asks.

  I grit my teeth and commit to an act of love tantamount to jumping off a cliff. “No, I’ll call them. They’ll call you as soon as I hang up. For the record, this isn’t proof I’m bad for Roberta, it’s proof I put her well-being ahead of all other things.”

  “I already knew that,” Betsy says.

  “Bob, how good of you to call.” Betsy’s father greets me with the usual sarcasm. “How they hanging?”

  I’m supposed to be embarrassed because I don’t have testicles anymore.

  “It really depends on who’s wearing them, Al.” I’m tempted to get really gross, but this isn’t about me. It’s about Roberta and Betsy.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of your call?” he asks. “Got your tit caught in a ringer?”

  “Sort of,” I say. I try to brush aside the Nazi humor and get to business. “We’re having some safety issues in my neighborhood just now, and I was wondering if you might be able to keep Roberta for a few more days. Until things settle down.”

  “What kind of safety issues?” His voice is taunting. He thinks I’m talking about riots, black and brown people running in the streets, burning cars, raping and stealing, an affirmation of the stereotype he has of cities.

  “The kind where I think Roberta would be safer with you.” I don’t play his games. I stay pleasant and ignore his baiting.

  He puts his wife on an extension, and I talk them through the school routine. When I mention the Blue Line elevated train, Mrs. Hitler nearly has a heart attack.

  “I just wanted to mention it,” I say, trying to calm her. “The vehicle traffic between the Loop and Oak Park is brutal during rush hour. Just know about the train—it can save you a lot of time and it’s safe.” It takes all my willpower not to make a crack about minorities wanting to kill and eat old white people.

  As we wind up the conversation, Al sneaks in his usual insult. “Still got your dick, Bob?” he asks.

  My resolve to be pleasant evaporates in the realization that this asshole needs a bitch slap. With his wife still listening on the other phone, I answer him cheerily.

  “Why would I, Al? From what I can see, having one makes you one.”

  Grandpa Hitler says good-bye for both of them. They won’t be inviting me to Thanksgiving dinner this year.

  15

  DINNER IS QUIET and lonely without Roberta here, but that’s okay—I need the time to work on my stalker problem.

  My first move is somewhere between ludicrous and slapstick funny. After dark, I turn off all the lights in the front room and slip out to the front porch. I lay three rat traps, unbaited, around the doorway. Just in case Mr. Stalker comes calling, I’d like to share the pain with him. I know, a rat trap won’t inflict real pain on someone wearing shoes, but it would give the coward a nice start on a heart attack. And it would let him know I’m not a pushover. I don’t know why that last part is important to me, but it is. That’s what took me to the ultimate showdown with John Strand. He liked that I fought back. It made me a more interesting prey. At least, until he ended up dead.

  After I set the traps, I retire to my great extravagance, an oversized oval tub in which I can lie my oversized body down and soak for hours. I put Mozart and Beethoven on my sound system, click on the speakers in the spa, and draw a bath hot enough to burn the paint off a car. As I ease into the bubbles and water, I try to draw a plan in my mind for having the stalker step on my porch and fall into ten feet of boiling water beneath the false floor. Or a trap door. That somehow only opens for stalkers and lets the mailman go in peace.

  As an engineer, I’m a great hairdresser.

  When I’m settled and relaxed, I review my list of possible stalkers. I’m not crossing off Mark, Victor, or Greco, but they aren’t at the top of my list, either. Lover Boy, the man I rejected on my doorstep, is a possibility. He seems kind of spineless for that kind of work, but that’s exactly the kind of guy who would sneak up on someone and try to terrorize them anonymously. And hurt them when they aren’t looking.

  My list also includes the speed freak named Joey who Phil mentioned. I took him down once, years ago, when he terrorized the salon, looking for his girlfriend, wanting to haul her away by her hair so she’d know he was the macho caveman who owned her. I assume he was as embarrassed as I was when his chest-thumping bravado ended up with him writhing on the floor, crying, downed by a transsexual woman. From what Phil said, Joey’s gone on to a career in crime and punishment. I can see him settling up an old debt to try to win back some self-respect.

  But the guy I would have bet on is Andive, Strand’s errand boy, my rapist, the man I had permanently disabled—and permanently retired.

  Cecelia says I’m supposed to be remorseful about that. I’m not sure she means it, but I’m not remorseful, not in the least. He was brutal and cruel and he laughed when I cried. Someone else can mourn for him, it won’t be me. My only regret is that I didn’t get to crush his kneecaps myself, or cut off his dick and balls. I’ve never been able to decide which would have been the most prefer
red form of revenge.

  I make a mental note to call on Mr. Andive, just to see for myself. He might not be capable of stalking me anymore, but he could hire someone else to do it.

  I imagine standing at his bedside, looking down at him, him near death, asleep, breathing shallowly. Me realizing I’m alone with him, that I could shove something up his ass, or pull out his IVs, or sprinkle cracker crumbs all over his bed so his final hours are spent in itching agony. I’m still weighing my evil options when the phone rings.

  “I can’t believe you called my dad a dick.” It’s Betsy. She’s speaking in a loud whisper and trying to sound serious, but I don’t think she’s all that upset.

  “Well, he brought it up,” I say, in my campiest femme voice. “So to speak.”

  Betsy tries to suppress her laughter, which comes out in sputtered giggles punctuated by little squeaks. She has chastised him many times for his penis barbs and knows he has it coming.

  It has to be in the wee hours of the morning in Paris. I can picture her in the bathroom, whispering on the phone, trying not to awaken Alex, trying to control her giggles. She loves her parents, but she knows who they are. My struggles with her father have been the source of much merriment over the years, though I lay off the Hitler stuff when she’s around.

  “Seriously, Bobbi—” Laughter overtakes her again.

  “I know he’s a pain, Bobbi,” she says, “but could you go easy on him? He’s a pretty decent guy when you get past the surface stuff.”

  “Of course, Betsy.” Part of our peace has always been that she tells me when to stop and I do what she says. I understand. You could say anything about my crappy parents and I wouldn’t care, but if you got past their bigotries, the Hitlers were parents who were good to their kids, obeyed the laws, paid their taxes—bitching and moaning like banshees, but they paid—and did all the other things that are worthy of a child’s love. So, I shut up to honor Betsy.

  When we hang up, I review my list of suspects again, ticking them off in my mind. With each name, I weigh their possible motives for stalking me.

  Mark. A self-absorbed, amoral man out for his own pleasure. Scaring me might be his idea of fun. If it’s him, the stalking is more fun than it would be to actually beat the crap out of me, or kill me.

  Victor Grassi. A bitter man who blamed me for his downfall. He’s got his life back, but he could be stalking me as a passive-aggressive form of revenge. If it was him, he probably wouldn’t try to harm me physically.

  Greco. According to his story, he’d only stalk me to make his girlfriend feel better. If he was going to hurt me, he would have done it already. Unless this is some kind of sick game he and Cindy like to play, in which case, everything he told me would be a lie and the game would go on.

  Lover Boy. I shattered his male ego. That would be enough for some men to strike back, maybe him. Stalking would be how he would do it. He doesn’t have the moxie to face me head-on.

  Joey. He’s the kind of guy who makes cops and public defenders give up on humanity, a person with no redeeming goodness, too stupid to stay out of trouble. I shattered his bad-guy ego. If he’s the stalker, he’ll be working toward a violent finish, with a gun or knife this time.

  Andive. I can’t shake the feeling he’s the one. His career was terrorizing and hurting people. This is perfect for him and he’s got motive in spades. Except, of course, he’s bedridden. Supposedly.

  Six suspects.

  I get out of my bath and towel off in front of a mirror, part of my mind taking inventory of my femininity, the other part, concentrating on my stalker.

  Six suspects.

  The number bothers me. I have a client who’s an actuary. He makes his living with numbers and probabilities. He told me once that human experience comes down to the numbers one, three, and seven. One is our ego number. Three is the rhythm of our language—the law of threes, which makes us struggle for three reasons or three examples or three facts when we’re listing more than one thing in our speech. And seven is our world number, the number of days in a week, the key to time on planet Earth, the number of deadly sins, and a make-or-break number in craps, a game of chance that he personally thinks reflects the capricious nature of life.

  When he talked about it, I thought he was high on something, or just eccentric, but over the years I’ve seen his number theory apply to my own life so many times I can’t shake it.

  There should be a seventh suspect.

  I rack my brain some more. I can’t think of any other past lovers who might bear a grudge. My recent promiscuity notwithstanding, there haven’t been that many, and usually, it’s them leaving me. We’ve had some irate customers at the salon over the years, but no one has ever left harboring a lot of resentment—as a matter of policy, we guarantee satisfaction or the service is free. It cuts out a lot of ill will. I’ve never had problems with any neighbors or rival businesses, no road rage incidents or subway run-ins.

  Like always, this exercise ends up focused on Andive’s accomplice. Everyone thinks he left town around the time Strand was murdered and won’t ever come back, but who can really say? I never saw this man’s face or heard his name, so he could be here now. He could be living next door. He could be the mayor’s chauffeur. For that matter, he could be the mayor. The thing is, I never did anything to him and from what Andive told the detective investigating the Strand murder, the two thugs weren’t close. He wouldn’t be here to settle scores for Andive.

  I go to bed with six suspects on my list. Again.

  Cecelia and Miguel arrive at my front door at the same time in the morning. Miguel is the contractor I hired to remove the graffiti from the front of my building. He did some of the work on the salon, too, but we haven’t met before.

  When I open the door, his face goes through several stages of surprise as his eyes travel up my anatomy from the point where he had expected to find the eyes of a normal-size woman, to the rarified heights where my eyes reside. Miguel is at least six inches shorter than me. It could be worse. I’m just out of the shower, so I’m not wearing heels. Indeed, my hair hangs in wet curls, my face begs for makeup, and I haven’t yet put on hose, so my pale legs are fully exposed to the elements and the view of others.

  Miguel inspects the damage and tells me what he’s going to do. Cecelia’s even taller than me. Amazement sweeps across his face. He has descended into the land of Amazon women. Still, he remains polite and businesslike as I do introductions. Cecelia goes inside while Miguel finishes his analysis.

  By the time I go back in the apartment, Cecelia has coffee brewing and has taken her usual seat at my kitchen table.

  “Is he one of your conquests, paying you back in trade?” Cecelia asks. Her brand of friendly joshing.

  “No,” I answer, sitting down across from her. “I gave up short men after that one got his face caught between my boobs. He almost smothered.”

  “I missed that,” Cecelia smirks.

  “It was in all the papers.”

  Cecelia pours the coffee and asks me to update her on my stalker situation. I end by telling her about my suspect list, and the rule of sevens that’s bothering me. She looks at me like I have two heads.

  “I’ve been a numbers person all my life,” she says. “I’ve never heard of a rule of sevens.”

  “It’s all over your religion,” I tell her. “Look it up. Seven days for creation. The original Bible was organized into seven sections. Seven annual holy days. Jesus performed seven miracles on God’s holy Sabbath. The book of Revelations is crazy with sevens. Look it up!”

  Cecelia is dumbfounded. “Where do you get this stuff ? You’re an atheist.”

  “Google, baby. But I learned the law of sevens from an actuary.”

  “Actuaries are like lawyers, except for being smarter. Some are brilliant, some are just smart, but it sounds like your actuary is a screwball. They come along in every profession. Don’t worry about seven. Worry about one.”

  There’s no sense arguing about it.
She believes in an unseen God, and I believe in the rule of sevens. We move on. She shrivels her nose when I tell her about the three I’ve checked out. They don’t sound promising to her. When I tell her about the other three, she gets insistent that I turn everything over to the police.

  “These people are dangerous,” she says. “The people they associate with are dangerous.”

  I shrug. I don’t want to argue this point either. The cops have enough to do without running down the wild suspicions of a crazy woman.

  “The last time you did this, someone got killed. It could have been you.” She bludgeons me with this memory when I don’t show proper acceptance of her counseling.

  In our normal conversations, this would be my cue to recite one of the hackneyed trendy phrases in the current American vocabulary. “I have to do what I have to do” is the one that plays at my lips. In other circumstances, we might say to the other person, “It is what it is,” which must draw the pithy response, “How could it be anything else?” It’s mental waterboarding for people with a sense of humor and a low tolerance for stupidity.

  But this is serious, so I just nod to indicate my comprehension of her vast wisdom.

  Cecelia sighs and crosses her arms and stares at me. I feel like I’m in the presence of Cleopatra at the height of her regal powers. “Okay,” she says, “Which one are you chasing down next?”

  “Joey.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she says.

  “No, Cecelia. I can handle Joey. I don’t want anyone else at risk.”

  “You did that last time, too.”

  I can’t really argue this point. I didn’t confide in anyone once John Strand made me his next target. In the first place, no one could protect me. In the second, it became increasingly obvious that I would have to murder him or he would murder me, in which case, I wanted no witnesses.

  We’re silent for a while, then she changes the subject.

  “How are you finding these people?” she asks.

  “I give the chief of police blow jobs,” I say.