Assault with a Deadly Lie

by Lev Raphael

  “They died younger than I am now. I’ve outlived them both by three years.”

  I had not ever expected to feel sorry for Lucky, who had until now been so dismissive of me and Stefan, but I couldn’t help being moved now. He apparently saw that on my face and shook his head.

  “I don’t like you, I don’t like Stefan, I don’t like anybody much. And I’m not likeable myself. That’s just the way it is. And having cancer isn’t going to turn me into a sweetheart.”

  Lucky’s gruff honesty was completely disarming. And what made it all the more believable was that he moved away now, sat in front of another set of jets, smiled crookedly, leaned his head back and clearly was ending the conversation. He didn’t want sympathy, and he wasn’t really apologizing. And yet—

  I waited till he left a few minutes later and I stayed in the whirlpool for a while by myself. I did not want to walk out of there with him behind me anywhere. I couldn’t be sure I trusted him. Hell. I didn’t know if I trusted anybody now because someone was still out to get me. Despite what Lucky had said, it could be him and it wouldn’t take much to grab me and throw me back down into the whirlpool and crack my skull open on the unyielding tile steps.

  I showered off and dried myself, keeping my eyes open and staying alert the whole time, feeling very vulnerable without clothes on, and on slippery surfaces. I hurried back to my locker and got dressed more speedily than usual, and almost shouted when a quiet voice behind me said, “Your towel?” I whirled around and it was one of the black-clad minions who scuttled through the club cleaning up. I thrust my towel at him, he nodded thanks and bore it off to his black laundry cart which I had not even noticed was nearby.

  Talk about creepy. Someone more suspicious than I am might have assumed these staffers were all illegal aliens, the way they walked with their heads down and their cap visors shading their faces. They were all short and skinny and anonymous-looking. These worker bees clearly had instructions to not just be as quiet as possible, but noiseless, too, and not to interact with club members in any significant way. If you said “Hello” or “Good Morning” or “Thanks” to one of them, they just nodded and hurried away as if you might be contagious—or the contact could get them fired. I think their self-effacement was meant to increase members’ comfort at the club, or sense of privilege, but it annoyed me most of the time, and today, it seemed threatening.

  Out in the parking lot, every black car I saw seemed menacing, and my mind filled with visions of carjackings from news stories and movies. If Lucky really was our stalker, the cunning thing to do would be to make a fake confession, then attack me in the parking lot when I was still pondering his pathetic story. The lot was filling up, since it was lunchtime. I had to dodge lots of drivers to get to my car, and even that ordinary action made me picture myself being run over.

  Driving home in Michiganapolis’s version of lunchtime rush hour traffic, I was sure I was being followed at a distance, but I was also sure I was paranoid and might not be able to trust my perceptions for a long time. It was like what my cousin Sharon told me about what happened to her after brain surgery. The combination of anesthesia still in her body and the morphine for her pain had given her twenty-four hours of hallucinations that were so intense, for weeks afterwards she wasn’t sure what was real or not real, whether she’d actually had a conversation or not. “The worst thing is when you stop trusting yourself,” she had explained. “And you wonder if you’re crazy.”

  If I told Sharon I was planning to get a gun, I was sure that “crazy” would be one of the first things she’d call it.

  Wild ideas went through my head, like stopping at the next light, jumping out and running down the street behind me to see if that particular black car was the Caddy I’d thought I’d spotted before. Or pulling sharply into a driveway, any driveway, and letting that car go by to see if I could spot the license plate or the driver inside. But I went straight home, exhausted by gun shopping, my workout, and my own fear. It was bad enough to feel haunted in bed, unable to sleep because I was reliving the night Stefan and I had been humiliated, or be assaulted by those visions during the day. But I had something worse undermining my stability: I was afraid of myself now, of losing control, of seeing things that weren’t there, or imagining the worst.

  I found Stefan out on the patio, a bottle of eighteen-year-old Macallan on the table next to his chair. It had been unopened before the night Stefan was driven off to jail. Now it was half-empty, and I hadn’t had any. This was the first time I’d seen Stefan with it. Marco was lying on his side on the grass, and he looked up at me sleepily, wagged his tail, and went back to his nap.

  “I walked him and fed him,” Stefan said, voice slurred, barely turning around to look at me.

  “Did you have lunch?” I asked.

  “Not hungry.”

  I wasn’t either, though I knew I should be eating after a workout, and drinking water, too. There was another Galway crystal scotch glass on the table, waiting for me. I sat down in the chair on the other side of the low round table, poured myself a few fingers of scotch and drank. It had a good, smooth, oaky burn. Stefan never drank this early in the day, unless we were having brunch. Neither did I. But the raid had unmoored us in so many different ways, that breaking from our habits like this seemed inconsequential.

  “I was at the gym,” I said, enjoying the midday quiet in our yard and in our neighborhood, though a distant ambulance siren briefly made my jaw clench.

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “And before that, the police station. To get a gun purchase permit.”

  “That is pretty fucked up,” he said, sipping some more from his glass, and sounding like one of my students. “No matter what Vanessa said, you shouldn’t have a gun. I called a couple of security firms about an alarm system, and we could have people out to do estimates any time we want next week.”

  “Great. Fine. That’s not going to stop me from getting a gun.”

  He sat up, plunked his glass down on the table where it clattered on the glass top, and glared at me. “And what’s the point?”

  “To defend myself.”

  “If you’d had a gun when the police came, what difference would that have made?”

  “I don’t feel safe anymore, you know that.”

  I couldn’t understand why he was so resistant and negative, so determined to argue me out of what I was sure I needed to do. Then I thought about the best defense being a good offense and wondered if he was blowing smoke.

  “Why did you lie to Vanessa about not having anything to hide?”

  He turned away sullenly, took up his glass and downed what was in it, held the glass against one cheek as if it were an ice pack and he’d been hit and his face was swollen.

  “You’re lying now,” I observed.

  He changed the subject: “You’ve always said America was gun-crazy, and now you’ve gone crazy, too? How is that possible? I know I said I wished I had a gun, but I wasn’t thinking straight, I was humiliated and I wanted revenge. If I can try to get past that, so can you.”

  You don’t need drama and shouting for an argument. A few sharp accusations and questions are enough. We glared at each other, and I understood now what Vanessa had said about incidents like the police raid driving people apart. I wanted to say something even nastier right then. I wanted to hurt Stefan almost as badly as I had wanted to hurt Stone in Ludington, but not physically this time.

  “How am I supposed to live with a gun nut?” he said in a low voice.

  “How do you live with a gun nut? The same way I live with a Catholic. You’ll get over it.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, and stormed back into the house.

  “Very mature!” I called, aware that my own comment wasn’t much better.

  16

  They say you should never go to bed angry when you’re in a relationship, but we did anyway that night. I took some Benadryl which knocked me out in minutes.

  Wednesday morning I found Stefan i
n the kitchen pulling open drawers and cabinets, banging plates and cutlery, generally making as much noise as he could without actually breaking anything while he put together a sandwich. Marco watched him, hopeful.

  He angrily sliced some fresh rye bread, but I didn’t say a thing about his sawing away with that big knife and possibly cutting himself. “There are over three hundred million guns in this country that private citizens own,” he said, slapping the bread onto a plate. “Three hundred million. Why do you need to have one?”

  “How is that a reason for me not to have a gun?”

  “You’ve been proud that you don’t fit in, in lots of ways, and now you’re one of the sheep.”

  “You converted, so how are you any different?”

  He slammed down the knife, grabbed a smaller one, slathered Grey Poupon onto both sides of the bread, and slapped thin-sliced roast beef on both pieces. It looked messy but good. I registered that, even though our continuing argument had purged me of hunger.

  I went after him because he hadn’t responded, even though I knew I was wrong to do it. “You’re a Christian now—”

  “A Roman Catholic.”

  “Last I heard, they were still Christians. You changed religions. You used to be a minority, now you’re in the majority. Fine. It’s what you want. It makes you happy. I’m getting a gun. That’s what I want. What’s the fucking difference?”

  He shook his head disdainfully, and I despised him at that moment, even as I wondered how it was possible to be so angry at someone you loved and lived with. “Don’t compare faith to a firearm—that’s just stupid.”

  “How about trying to sound like an adult when you trash me?”

  Stefan bit into his sandwich, staring off behind me, as if willing me to disappear. Then he looked me in the eyes. “You’re right,” he said, his voice softening.

  “What?”

  “You’re right. I’m not being adult. I made a huge change in my life, and you accepted it. Now, when you’re making a huge change in your life, what do I do? I start freaking out. That’s wrong.”

  Nonplussed, I didn’t know what to say. Was he sincere, or was this some kind of reverse psychology?

  Stefan took a deep breath. “But it’s not the gun, not really. It’s that everything seems harder since … since what happened, it seems out of whack. I don’t even know how I can go back to teaching when fall semester starts, or write anything again. My life doesn’t make sense. If I’ve been touchy about Fieldwork, that’s why.”

  “I feel the same way. And then the stalking, the threats, the—” I pointed up in the general direction of the bedroom, not wanting to even say what we had found there polluting our bed.

  “Listen, Nick, you want to get a gun? As long as you learn how to use it, and you buy a gun safe to keep it in, that’s all that counts.” He tried to smile. “At least we don’t have kids to worry about. There’s no chance Marco could ever get a hold of it without us knowing.”

  I could feel the fog of hostility inside me clearing. “Thanks.”

  Marco had wisely kept his distance during our low-key rumble, and wherever he was, he suddenly went barking to the front door. We both froze. And then looked at each other in complete connection and forgiveness, because no matter what the current tussle had been about, we were in this together. It reminded me of one of my favorite novels, Brideshead Revisited, where Oxford students Charles and Sebastian feel themselves contra mundum: together against the world. It had truly felt all week that the world was leagued against us.

  Stefan said, “I’m sorry,” as I headed to the door and I called back to him, “Me, too.”

  Vanessa was there, and I could feel my shoulders relax. “Gotta minute? I left something at home, so I figured I’d stop here on the way back to my office.” She looked stunning in some kind of stretchy aqua sheath, with patent leather beige heels and matching shoulder bag. Seeing her was a shot of adrenaline—she was so bright and beautiful and tough. I may have been living in Michigan for a long time, may have considered it my home now, but I still loved New York flash.

  She followed me to the kitchen, Marco dancing around her feet as she went. “Hey, kiddo,” she said, not ignoring him, but very focused.

  Stefan said “Hi” and leaned back against the counter as if bracing himself for bad news.

  “Okay guys, your friend in Ludington, he rented his car at Detroit Metro, drove straight to Ludington, didn’t leave when stuff was happening to you here in town.”

  “How can you know that for sure?”

  “My PIs are the best, I told you.” She winked.

  “What about Lucky?”

  “Jackpot, maybe. He does drive that model of Cadillac, it’s a 2011.”

  “Sonofabitch!” I said. “He just made me feel sorry for him, I was sure he was for real. He played me!” I told her about our meeting at the gym, and his confession about his illness and his personality.

  “Never trust a guy in a hot tub,” she said, smiling.

  “So is he our stalker?”

  “You tell me.” She handed me a Post-it. “This is his license plate number. You have to get the one on whatever car is following you, the next time it happens. Nobody can do that for you, really. If it matches, well, then it’s obvious. Oh, and that dean of yours? He drives an Audi, his wife has a Stingray, so he might be off your list. But my PIs will keep digging. There’s nothing they can’t find.” She grinned a bit mysteriously and made her exit, sleek and dynamic. Juries would either be blown away by her, I thought, or resent her blazing confidence.

  Stefan came over to hug me, and we were silent for a moment. “Are you hungry?”

  I was, now, and even though I hadn’t had breakfast, I was ready for lunch. I broke out some sliced Jarlsberg, half-sour pickles, and the broccoli coleslaw I’d made a few days ago, while he sliced bread for my sandwich. I looked down at the container.

  “You made that coleslaw before last Wednesday night,” Stefan observed flatly, as if reading my mind. “That was like a different life, it seems like we were different people.”

  “We were. It’s what Vanessa said. We’ve had easy lives compared to most people and nothing to do with cops, ever, real cops, I mean. The worst experience was speeding tickets, and how bad is that?”

  We both sighed. In this moment of calm, with the hostility between us having evaporated, I wanted to ask him again what he was hiding from me and Vanessa, but my better angels held me back. As one of Oscar Wilde’s characters said, now was not the time for German skepticism. I’d never exactly understood what the quip meant, but that day, it seemed to fit.

  We were both restless with Vanessa’s news, and we ate standing at the kitchen island, too jazzed to sit down, processing what she’d said.

  “Maybe we both need to try and track our stalker?” Stefan suggested. “Or you could drive around hoping he’ll follow you, and I’ll be further back.”

  “You really think we can work out the coordination? And if it’s Lucky for sure, he doesn’t seem predictable. How do we lure him into following me?”

  “You could drive by his house a few times and piss him off.”

  I suddenly felt deflated. “And then what?” I asked. “What proof do we have that he’s done all the other stuff ? The phone calls—the roadkill—any of it. We’d have to catch him in the act, somehow.”

  After a moment, I added, “Listen, you’re more analytical than I am, while you figure it out, I’m going to check out the campus gun range.” I made sure I had the address and left him the pamphlet, now that it was no longer taboo.

  SUM had begun as a small agricultural college in the mid-nineteenth century and if you had nothing to do with crop science or soil science or anything like that, it was easy to forget those origins. That is, until you headed south and the buildings gave way to vast acres of farmland and pasturage that felt as far removed from the built-up core of campus as Tibet was from Chicago.

  The gun range was at the every southern edge of campus, iso
lated amid all those green fields. Apparently immune to irony, the university saw no problem with the Garfield range being on Lincoln Road—unless somebody thought the association with two presidents who’d been shot was perversely amusing. The building was low and gleaming, like some kind of health care pavilion, glittering with glass brick and solar panels. I parked in the near-empty lot and headed inside where the terrazzo-floored lobby was so large it felt like some kind of arena. There were several plush seating areas, racks with brightly colored flyers, a snack bar just like you’d find in a gym, and a small information counter. A scrawny, bored-looking guy with fashionable stubble asked if I needed help, and when I explained I was a faculty member and wanted beginner’s instruction, he suggested the afternoon class which was only fifteen minutes from now.

  The place thrummed with air conditioning so loudly it felt like an ocean liner pulling out of port. I was glad for the noise, since there wasn’t any music playing anywhere and the silence made me uneasy.

  I signed a waiver that I only skimmed, and looked around guiltily, the way an alcoholic might wonder about seeing someone he knew when he snuck into a bar. I deposited myself on a sofa and shut my eyes, trying to relax.

  “Professor Hoffman!” The guy who came to claim me for his class greeted me as if we were cousins reuniting after years for a family wedding. “Hey! Great to see ya!” He was five-ten, swarthy, with green eyes, movie star lips, and large forearms. “Your class in crime fiction three years ago, remember? I wrote that final paper on Mystic River ?”

  “Right …” How many students had I taught since that class? Then his name popped up as if on a flash card: “Seamus, how are you?”

  He grinned, slapped my back and led me down a short hallway to a bland classroom like hundreds on campus. I was alone, which might have accounted for his enthusiasm. He started a PowerPoint that took me through the parts of a gun and gun safety, explaining everything with the zeal of a real estate broker pushing a house that had been on the market too long. Now and then he read exactly what was on the screen, which seemed a waste of time, but I wasn’t going to fault his pedagogy since I loved hearing about the construction of a pistol, how it operated, how the components fit together.