by Peter Gadol
“Oh, we had the cash,” Ezra said. “It was more for the thrill that you took it. You looked at me and winked and grabbed it.”
“But it was in your coat when we left the store,” I said.
“True,” Ezra said. “We were thieves together.”
“So wild.”
I wondered if his memory of that road trip matched mine. The high bed at the inn, the fraying quilts. The noisy ocean, the salt in the air. This was long ago now. Aging suddenly seemed unfair.
We drank the bottle of wine, had scrambled eggs for dinner, drank half of another bottle. Ezra was renting a room near where his apartment had been, but the wine had made him too groggy to drive, and I told him to stay. So as not to be ambiguous, I threw two pillows and a blanket on the couch. From my bedroom, I tried to listen to him breathing, but all I heard was wind in the scrub, knocking around chimes blocks away. I slept poorly, barely slept at all.
I pictured the bald guy bringing his hands up in the air, setting them squarely against Garcia’s chest and Garcia’s expression when he realized he was falling back—the roundness of his brow, of his mouth: Why?
In the morning I had to ask, “Is this about justice for you, about Garcia’s death? Or is it more about getting back at Carey?”
“Both. Neither,” Ezra said. “I don’t know.”
The way he was looking at me then, or rather not looking at me and instead staring at the floor, pained, apologetic, I suspected what he wanted most was to make everything right by me.
“We could call the police on ourselves,” I said.
“We cannot report our own trespassing.”
“Why not?”
“We have to look like the real deal,” Ezra said, “or we won’t find out anything.”
“Fine,” I said, but I set new terms: we could claim we were playing the stranger game, but no more actual random follows. No more chance.
We set out on foot on a street that wound down from my house, and it didn’t take long to latch on to a morning dog walker. Although we were technically still in my neighborhood, I knew neither the slender man fixated on his cell phone nor his slender hound, who stopped every five feet to sniff the ground. Maybe the dog truly was interested in all of the trash cans, car tires, and dewy weeds he needed to smell, but equally likely, he wanted to forestall the inevitable: being left alone for the day. The man tugged the dog along at a certain point and picked up the pace. He wasn’t inside his house for long before he left again, briefcase in hand, and drove away.
We hoped the dog would see us around back and bark. No such luck: he paced back and forth along sliding glass doors and whimpered and wagged his tail when we tried to open it. Freedom wasn’t coming, sorry, dog. The patio had a built-in barbecue, its lid thrown back. We could start a fire on the grill, send up smoke signals. Ezra lay back on a wicker chaise and looked amused watching me bounce around looking for an alarm we could set off, but to do that, we’d probably need to break a window and get inside. My insomnia had left me a little delirious: I was on my knees trying to find a stone in the shallow herb garden to hurl, but then the thought of the broken glass and the dog padding around gave me pause. Ezra was giggling. This went on awhile.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You should see yourself. You—”
When he stopped midsentence and sprang up, I looked where he was looking: two police officers were standing by the gate, each with his right hand hovering over his holster. We would never learn if the neighbors spotted us and called, or if the homeowner returned and saw us, or if someone else had been in the house.
I was standing, hands in the air. So was Ezra, although no guns were drawn and neither officer had instructed us to assume this posture, so in effect we were professing our guilt unprompted.
“Mind telling us what’s going on?” one officer asked.
I started to answer: “We thought...” I was nervous.
“You thought what?” the second officer asked.
When Ezra lowered his hands, the first officer said, “That’s okay. Why don’t you keep them up for us.”
This cop looked familiar; it was possible he’d been part of the crew removing Carey’s belongings from my house.
“We’re players,” Ezra said. “We heard—”
“That there’s protection,” I said.
The officers glanced at each other.
“We don’t know what you’re referring to,” the first officer said.
I put my arms down, and so did Ezra. Neither officer told us to put them back up. I tried to bluff my way through this: we were only trying to take the stranger game to the next level, and this was something we’d heard rumors about. Were we mistaken that the police were not opposed to this kind of recreation so long as no property was damaged and no one was hurt in the process?
The first officer nodded at the second officer, who stepped back through the gate toward the street.
“Did you hire a tour guide?” the officer asked.
“A tour guide,” Ezra said.
“You have to clear it first,” the officer said. “And pay the fees.”
“Oh,” I said. “That makes sense. We’re so sorry. We didn’t know.”
“How much usually is it?” Ezra asked.
The officer said all costs and such were set by the tour guide. We’d have to speak to one directly.
“Right now you’ll need to leave,” he said and opened the gate. “We can let this go. Next time, make arrangements first.”
Ezra and I walked in front of the officer out to the street, where the other officer was smoking a cigarette.
“How do we find a tour guide?” Ezra asked.
Again the two officers exchanged glances. The second one chuckled, and the first officer shook his head and laughed at something, too. He pulled out a citation pad, ripped off a blank ticket, and wrote an address on the back.
“The rest is up to you,” he said.
“You followed by car?” the second officer asked.
“We walked,” I said.
“Then I suggest you walk away now,” he said.
Back at my house, Ezra located the address of the so-called tour guide on his phone map.
“Can we take a moment before we get in much deeper?” I asked. “We’ve established that the police are corrupt. Isn’t that a big deal?”
“We already knew that,” he said. “Come on.”
He was heading for his car this time, not mine, and he drove. I wondered how many tour guides there were; I suspected the network was vast. I also wondered if this was a trap.
“Why would it be a trap?” Ezra asked.
“Bribery has to be worse than trespassing,” I said. “This would be a bigger collar.”
“Collar,” Ezra said. “The words you use now.”
“Don’t be mean to me,” I said. We both were worn out and cross.
It didn’t take long to find the house in the flats south of where I lived and on the other side of the boulevard. I had been on this street before, this block, in fact.
“There it is,” Ezra said.
He had pulled opposite a small house, a cottage painted green, the trim a darker green.
“Oh, no,” I said and slid down in my seat. “That’s the address? You’re sure?”
“It’s what the officer wrote down,” Ezra said. “Should we knock?”
“No,” I said, “no,” and tugged at Ezra’s sleeve so he’d slide down in his seat, too. “I’ve been here before.”
“You have?”
“We have to get out of here.”
“But—”
“Ezra, drive away. Now. Please.”
“I don’t—”
“Please,” I pleaded, and he shifted the car in gear and continued down the block, then doubled back along a parallel
street.
We sat in his car outside my house. He waited. I was massaging my temples with my fingers.
“Do you want to tell me who lives in that house?” he asked.
“Detective Martinez,” I said, and I could not have been more spun around.
ALL TRUST WAS GONE, TRUST WAS ANTIQUATED, TRUST QUAINT. Betrayal was routine, betrayal was sport. I vowed never again to allow myself to be so deceived.
I claimed I was going to lie down and closed the door to my bedroom, but sat in a chair in the corner and watched the dance of afternoon light across the spines of books packed into tall shelves. I could hear Ezra puttering in the other room. He left me alone. When I opened the door later, it turned out he had been putting away dishes, taking out the trash, sweeping.
“You don’t need to do that,” I said. What I meant was: I can take care of myself.
“Are you okay?” Ezra asked.
“I’m fine,” I said. And then: “We are never going to figure this out.”
“But Martinez, Allagash—”
“I’m convinced they’re working together. They’re all in cahoots.”
“Cahoots,” Ezra said.
“Stop making fun of the words I use,” I snapped.
“I meant cahoots sounds too cute,” he said.
“Anyway I’m done,” I said.
“What do you mean done?”
“This has gotten too risky.”
Ezra stared at me.
“I’m sorry, but you really don’t sound like yourself,” he said.
“I don’t even know what that means. I’m done trying to figure out the stranger game network and the connection to the police or why Garcia would be pushed to his death.”
“I don’t believe you,” Ezra said. “You don’t like unsolved puzzles—”
“Puzzles? Puzzles is what sounds too cute,” I said. “While I was in the bedroom, I decided to go into the office tomorrow. I’ve been gone long enough.”
“Really,” Ezra said.
“I talked to Rick the other day, and he said that if I’m in better shape, he thinks I should return. Everyone agrees.”
“I don’t believe you,” Ezra said again.
“So you keep saying. I’m out of cash and I need to go back to work.” This was almost true. Then I added, “And I’m sure you need to find a job, too.”
Ezra was at a loss.
“I need to get ready for tomorrow,” I said.
He didn’t move.
“Alone,” I said.
“I’ll call you later.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Tomorrow—”
“No need.”
“When can I see you?” he asked.
I didn’t answer him, so he stepped forward and drew me into a defiant hug. I didn’t embrace him with the same passion. My hands rested on his shoulder blades. He didn’t let go. My hands slid down to his middle back, two ridges, a straight river running through the dell between. His breath warmed my neck. He let go first.
LYING AWAKE THAT NIGHT, WHAT I FIXATED ON WAS HOW LONG it had been since I had exerted any sort of control in my own life. I needed to take charge, although I knew Ezra was right: I didn’t sound like myself, and by extension I wasn’t behaving like myself either. Some bolder truculent version of me was at the wheel the next morning when I drove up to the police station near the park and told the sergeant at the front desk I wanted to speak with Detective Allagash.
The sergeant gave me a once-over. “And you are?” she asked.
There was something about her narrow face—I’d seen her before, but out of uniform. How did I know her?
I gave my name and said, “He’s expecting me,” because in a way I thought he was.
I didn’t recognize Detective Allagash at first because he’d shaved his mustache. His face looked so blank, like a sundial at noon. He ushered me into the same room where I’d been brought seventeen days earlier.
“I’m surprised to see you,” he said, jovial, like we were old pals. “How have you been? How can I help you today?”
He threw me off by being so affable.
“I’m wondering why haven’t you questioned me again,” I said.
Detective Allagash feigned surprise. “Questioned you?”
“You said you would be wanting to talk to me again.”
The detective stroked his upper lip, maybe not yet used to having no hair there.
“Is there something in particular you’d like to tell me?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “But when you were at my house—Am I under investigation for murder?”
I couldn’t tell whether the detective was amused or confused.
“Would you like to amend your statement? Is that why you’re here?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I was under the impression that you were investigating me.”
He leaned in. “And why do you think that? Who told you that?”
The detective himself had instructed me not to leave town without telling him: it had certainly sounded like a threat.
“Never mind,” he said. “I am pretty sure I know who gave you that idea.”
“What about Carey?” I asked.
“I can’t really comment on an open case.”
“What about the bald guy?”
“Who?” the detective asked—he was playing me. “As I said, I can’t comment. But I will say it’s been several weeks since the event, and as you might imagine, the longer we’re out there, the colder the trail gets.”
This was his way of telling me they were burying the case, wasn’t it? I was certain now that he was involved with the tour guides, with who knew what else, and for whatever reason, he didn’t want Carey connected to what had happened to Garcia, and all trace of Carey had been erased.
“Can I make a suggestion, Ms. Crane? Why don’t you go home and try to move on? You need to accept that we don’t always solve every crime. Why don’t you go home and get on with your life?”
“I’m not sure I can,” I said.
“Try,” Detective Allagash said, glaring at me, and he did not look so amiable now.
I didn’t know what I had expected to discover, and on the way out, I studied the sergeant behind the front desk. She looked up, then back at her monitor—oh, no. I recognized her now: she was the stager who worked with the bald guy, the first time wearing a wig, the second time with her hair in a ponytail the way it was now. And she was a cop, too?
I was a little shaky, but my next move had to be to confront Detective Martinez. I drove to her precinct house. Here the officer at the counter told me that the detective wasn’t in today. When I asked when she’d return, the officer said that wasn’t information he could share.
“Then I’ll drive over to her place and see if she’s there,” I said, except I hadn’t meant to say this aloud, and the officer asked for my name before I left.
I was probably lucky a squad car didn’t trail me when I drove to the detective’s house, where no cars were parked in the driveway, and from which no dogs could be heard barking when I knocked on the door. I wasn’t about to give up and decided to cruise the neighborhood, rehearsing what I’d say when I found her, that I knew she’d only pretended to be my ally, that she was just as corrupt as every other cop on the force. I headed over to the hardware store where I’d once run into her, but she didn’t emerge. This was ludicrous—I was ludicrous. Did I really think I could express anything to her other than how confused I was? After the hardware store, I wove in and out of blocks for an hour with no real strategy. Eventually it occurred to me where I should go, and I curved around the reservoir past the dog park where, lo and behold, I spotted the detective wrangling her two big wooly dogs. It appeared she was trying to separate them from a retriever in whom they’d both taken an interest.
Even from across the street, I could hear Detective Martinez yelling, “You stop, you stop.”
She was out of uniform but wearing police-issued sweats and T-shirt. Eventually she guided both dogs into the back of her square sedan, which I guess she drove around even off duty. I knew that Detective Martinez of all people was probably especially good at knowing when she was being followed, so I hung back several cars behind her on the boulevard to avoid detection.
Ten minutes later, she turned a corner and glided into her driveway. Right as I was about to turn onto her street, too, I noticed a white car parked in front of her house, so I pulled over. I had a good angle on the detective’s front door, however, and I could watch her let her two dogs inside, only to turn around to face someone shouting that he wanted a word with her. It was Ezra, Ezra getting out of his car and heading up her front path. Of course he and I had the same rough plan to confront her.
Because the detective was holding open her front door, her dogs poured down the stoop again and simultaneously peed on the browned-out lawn. The detective snapped her fingers twice and they obediently trotted back inside. She did not ask Ezra in.
I could watch but not hear them. Ezra’s gestures were large, his hands going up in the air at one point as if he were throwing confetti. The detective was letting him rant but shaking her head from side to side in disagreement. It was hard to tell, but I thought that even she was going to lose her cool. Then she scratched her head and, it looked like, asked Ezra a series of questions, to which he didn’t react well: he was shrugging, throwing his hands up in the air again, exasperated, and when he jabbed his finger toward her chest, she grabbed his hand and held it in front of her a moment like a captured spider she wasn’t sure she should release or kill. She said something that Ezra didn’t like the sound of—I noted the way his shoulders sloped—and when the detective released his hand, he let it fall to his side. She went inside and shut the door.
Ezra didn’t step off her stoop at first. When he did walk back to his car, I ducked low—I didn’t think he saw me. He leaned forward and rested his head against the steering wheel. He turned the ignition, which I took as my cue to execute a swift U-turn and drive away.
