Midas

by Russell Andrews

  Justin realized he’d finished the second beer. He decided he could definitely use a third, so went back to the fridge. In fact, he pretty much decided at least one of the two six-packs on the refrigerator shelf was a goner, but halfway back to his living room, his doorbell rang.

  Justin glanced at his watch. Ten o’clock at night. He wasn’t used to unexpected visitors at this hour. He wasn’t used to any visitors, he realized. In the nearly seven years he’d lived in East End Harbor, not more than a dozen people—including the exterminator and the kid who cut his grass—had been inside his house.

  He headed for the door. Through the shaded glass panel he saw a woman’s figure. He pulled the door open, cocked his head in surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” Reggie Bokkenheuser said. He saw that she’d been crying. He must have been staring because she wiped at her cheek with her fingers, brushing away the moisture. “I just couldn’t stand being alone anymore and I don’t really know anybody else.” She waved in the direction of his television, which was still tuned to CNN. “I can’t stand watching it, but I can’t stop. I’m sorry, I just needed some company. If you want me to—”

  “No, no,” he said. “Come on in.”

  She hesitated, standing on the scraggly straw welcome mat on his screened-in porch. He gently took her by the elbow and guided her inside.

  “It just got to me,” she said. “The images, all the blood, the goddamn talk about war and—”

  He handed her his untouched bottle of beer. She looked surprised, but when he nodded, she raised it to her lips and took a long swallow.

  “I didn’t want to drink alone,” she said. “I didn’t know if I should drink at all. I didn’t know what the hell to do. Every time I thought of something that’d take my mind off all this, I felt like such a coward. Do you know what I mean?”

  “No idea,” he told her. “I was just about to get blind drunk.”

  She did her best to smile, almost succeeded, wiped at her cheek again and sniffled back a potential tear.

  “You moved in already?” he asked.

  “This morning. I didn’t have much. And I rented it furnished. All I really had to do was unpack.” They were still standing near the front door. “Look,” she said, “I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to come barging in here.”

  “It’s okay. It got to me, too. I’m sure it’s getting to everybody.” He did his best to look reassuring, realized that wasn’t one of his best things. “Did you eat dinner?”

  “No. I couldn’t bring myself to eat.”

  “How about now? A cheese omelet goes extremely well with beer. And I hope that appeals to you, because the only things I’ve got in the house are eggs and cheese and maybe a frozen steak that’ll take half a day to defrost.”

  She used her shirtsleeve to dab at her eyes and nodded. “I’m starving all of a sudden. Craving a cheese omelet.”

  So he went inside and made a six-egg omelet, mixed in some strong Epoisse cheese, cooked it until it was firm and nicely browned. She watched him cook, didn’t say a word. Occasionally he would glance up at her. Once, her eyes were unfocused and she was drifting off into her own thoughts. He noticed that she was wearing low-cut jeans, and scuffed black boots that added a couple of inches to her height. And a shirt that was too small, fashionably so, revealing some skin around her midriff. She was not a small girl, he realized. She was a little bit fleshy but it was sensual and sexy. She did not look very much like a cop at the moment, he thought, but then their eyes met, and she was jarred back into the present, so he stopped looking at her and concentrated on the omelet, which was almost ready.

  He got them each another bottle of beer and they went into the living room to eat. She gobbled her eggs down in what seemed like three bites. He liked the way she ate. There was no pretense to it, no attempt at being dainty. She was hungry and she attacked the food. After her last bite, she ran a finger around the rim of the plate, soaking up the olive oil, then put the finger in her mouth. When she was finished she said, “I guess eating was a good idea.”

  “I can make you another one if you want. You practically inhaled that.”

  “No, no, that was perfect. But yeah, I kind of like to eat. I’m not exactly the Gwyneth Paltrow/Calista Flockhart type.”

  “That’s probably a good thing. I don’t think they’d make such good cops.”

  She managed a real smile this time, like something had just loosened up inside of her, and she offered to go to the fridge to get this round of beer. When she returned they sipped slowly from their bottles, in no rush to finish. She talked a little bit more about the bombing, kept trying to change the subject, kept returning to the violence and the shock. Her legs and feet were tucked under her as she sat on the couch. Her boots were still on and for some reason he liked the fact that she knew he wouldn’t care if the leather rested on the couch. At some point, she pointed over to Chuck Billings’s notebook, asked what it was, but he just shook his head and said, “Work.” She asked if it was anything she should know about and he said no. He waited a few moments, then went over and closed the book. He couldn’t help himself. She didn’t seem to mind.

  It got to be midnight and they were still talking and the talk had not gotten any less gruesome. She was asking him about the violent things he’d seen and experienced. He told her about one case in Providence. Over a period of six months they’d found the bodies of three women whose eyes had been gouged from their sockets. The ME said that the gouging had come when each woman was still alive. When they caught the guy who did it, they found him living with his blind eighty-year-old mother. He was fifty-six years old, a CPA with a good job, well-liked at the office, but he’d never left home. He couldn’t break away. All he could do instead was leave work at the end of the day and go blind other women, torture them the way he wanted to torture his dear old mom.

  Reggie was interested, kept asking questions, so then he told her about a domestic disturbance call. A woman had swung a meat cleaver at her husband and it lodged in his neck. Justin answered the call, said he’d never seen so much blood. The neck was practically severed, but the guy was alive and talking. Kept talking about how his wife thought he’d been cheating on her but he wasn’t. Kept saying how much he loved his wife. Justin called for an ambulance. They took the guy to the hospital while Justin took the wife to the station. The guy died before they reached the hospital. The EMW said that the guy was talking up until the moment he died, still saying how much he loved his wife and how he was sorry he made her so jealous.

  Reggie asked him how he dealt with that kind of thing—didn’t it turn his stomach, didn’t it make him hard and insensitive? Justin said that yes, it turned his stomach, but you deal with it. You ignore the horror and do what you have to do until it’s all over. Then the horror returns, inside your own head, and you have to deal with that. And yes, he said, it does make you hard. It makes it difficult to feel anyone else’s pain because you spend your whole life having to put that pain out of your head so you can do your job.

  Then she asked him about his own pain.

  He knew that she knew. She’d said at lunch that she’d Googled him, had seen the stories about his past. They’d been in the Providence papers when it had all happened, and was rehashed in the media after the Aphrodite thing broke. So he told her about Alicia and Lili, about their deaths, about his helplessness and guilt. He hadn’t talked about it with many people, no more than a handful, didn’t know why he was talking about it now except that the bombings seemed to have turned the whole world upside down and, for the first time, his own loss seemed connected to a greater loss, even seemed connected to the woman sitting on his couch with her scuffed black boots tucked under her.

  And she talked about the losses she’d suffered, too. She was hesitant to reveal too much of herself, would start to say something, stop, give a quick, hard shake of her head as if reminding herself of her own vulnerability, and then she’d bite her lip, stopping the flow of words in midsentence. But she di
d tell him a bit more about her father, how devastated she was by his sudden death. How alone she felt and how afraid she was to ever be so dependent on one person for a sense of family, for a feeling of love and safety. Her mother had died when she was very young, twelve years old. She’d slipped and fallen from a balcony. Killed instantly.

  When she told that story, his eyes moved slightly and she caught the motion.

  “Yes, I know,” she said.

  “Know what?”

  “‘Slipped.’ I always accepted that because it’s what I was told. I was too young to ever think anything but that. But when I became a cop, I guess it’s the way we think, it occurred to me for the first time that maybe it wasn’t just an accident.”

  “Is there something that made you think that?”

  “She drank. I don’t know how happy she was. It could have been a suicide. I loved my father but he couldn’t have been easy to be married to. He didn’t talk much. Didn’t show much.”

  “It doesn’t much matter, does it? Accident or . . . no accident. It doesn’t change you or what you are. Or what’s happened since.”

  “No. It definitely doesn’t change me.” She gave a half smile. “I am what I am.”

  At one o’clock in the morning, he bobbed and weaved his way to the kitchen and the refrigerator, came back and said he was out of beer. Reggie said she didn’t care. She also made no move to leave. When he sat down on the couch, the first time he’d been next to her all night, his hand grazed against her thigh. He pulled it away quickly but she reached out and grabbed his wrist and pulled him closer to her.

  “This is really awkward,” she said. “But . . .”

  “But you don’t want to be alone tonight.” When she nodded, he said, “Neither do I.”

  The next few words came out slowly, and she kept shaking her head and stopping herself as she spoke, as if nothing that came out of her mouth was what she really wanted to say. “I can’t . . . I mean, I don’t think . . . what I want . . .”

  “You can have my room. It’s the most comfortable bed.”

  “Jay, I feel like an idiot. I mean . . .”

  “I know. Feels a little like high school.” She nodded again, looked down as if afraid to speak. “Get into bed,” he said. “I’ll sit with you until you fall asleep.”

  She smiled, thankful.

  “I don’t have a spare toothbrush,” he said. And then he added, “I don’t have a spare anything.”

  “I’ll live,” she told him. And then she went upstairs.

  He waited a few minutes, then he slowly climbed up to his room. He saw her clothes tossed over an old red felt-covered piano bench in the corner of the room. She hadn’t folded them. One leg of her jeans was inside out. One boot was upright, the other toppled on its side. He looked over at the bed and Reggie was in it, under the sheets, the thick blue quilt pulled up to her chin. She was already half asleep. Her eyes were almost closed and she looked peaceful. He could see her chest moving gently up and down under the covers.

  Justin gently eased himself down on the bed. She murmured something incoherent, it wasn’t even meant to be a word, just an acknowledgment of his presence. He stroked her hair slowly and softly and she sighed quietly and contentedly. He stayed there, just like that, for five more minutes until he knew she was asleep, and then he stayed several minutes more, his hand not moving, just resting on top of her head, slightly tangled in the strands of her hair. He pushed himself up off the bed, almost in slow motion, careful not to disturb her, and the moment he stood he was overcome with exhaustion. It hit him like a wave of heat, making him dizzy.

  He didn’t go to the tiny second bedroom at the top of the stairs. Instead he went back down to the living room. First he sat on the couch, then slowly stretched out. His body was too long to fit perfectly, so he curled his knees up, felt his side sink deeply into the cushion.

  He stayed awake for several minutes, listening to the quiet hum of the television, which he’d never turned off, not looking at the screen, instead watching the light emanating from it flicker and reflect off a window.

  Justin thought of the woman upstairs. About the smell of her shampoo that still lingered on his hand. About the way the day’s violence had frightened her. Changed her.

  He thought about the hundreds of thousands—the millions—of others who were also frightened, who were also changed.

  And before he finally fell asleep, he thought about himself. And wondered if he could ever truly be frightened again.

  Or changed.

  Some part of him hoped it was possible.

  But he didn’t really believe it.

  15

  Justin awoke at 7 A.M. He instantly twisted his stiff neck and heard it crack. His lower back was tight and when he stretched his body he felt an ache up and down his spine. His mouth was dry and fuzzy and his head hurt. Another day in paradise, he thought, and managed to sit up.

  The television was still on, still showing images of the latest bombing. He cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the stale taste of beer, and stood up. He took a few steps toward the TV, swiped at the power button and watched the picture fade. He slowly made his way upstairs, still twisting his neck and stretching his back. He pushed open the door to his bedroom. Reggie was sound asleep. He gently shook her, but she was in a deep sleep. He decided he could let her be, then he suddenly remembered the alarm, quickly reached out over her and hit the off switch on the radio before the Mark Knopfler CD he’d put in began to blare. He headed for his closet, walking as softly as he was capable of, pulled out a clean shirt. He then made it to the one chest of drawers, pulled out a pair of socks and underwear.

  He was on his way to the shower, but he stopped before leaving the bedroom, stood in the doorway and looked down at the woman in his bed. The blanket was only pulled up to the middle of her back. She slept on her left side and he could see most of her right breast and a tattoo on her right shoulder. A purple, black, and red butterfly. Her skin was remarkably smooth and soft. His gaze moved down her arm, which was perfectly proportioned, toned and muscular but not too thin. Just the right amount of flesh. It was an arm you wanted to touch. To stroke. Looking closer, he saw that she had elegant fingers. Long and perfectly manicured. In sleep they were relaxed. When she’d been awake last night, he realized her hands had been clenched much of the time.

  Justin couldn’t take his eyes off her, pleased by her loveliness, touched by the soundness of her sleep. Finally, he forced himself to turn away, went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, felt the stubble on his chin and cheeks, decided against shaving, then stepped into the shower stall and let the heavy stream of hot water do its best to cleanse him.

  When he was dry and dressed he almost felt like a new man—something he knew could only be an improvement. He went back downstairs to the front door to pick up the various newspapers he had delivered every morning. Before opening them, he headed into the kitchen and made a large pot of coffee. He had a feeling Reggie Bokkenheuser would match him cup for cup and he didn’t like to leave the house without having at least four large mugs of very strong, black French roast.

  He couldn’t face the real news, not right away, so he went immediately for the Daily News sports pages. It was a slow sports period. Justin searched for some good news about the Knicks, saw that Houston was hurt again. Near the beginning of the season, second leg injury. He read Doonesbury and Dilbert, then glanced at the front section. There was little about the bombing that he hadn’t picked up from CNN. The lunatic, Muaffak Abbas, had come into the restaurant in Manhattan and strode up to a table on the left side of the room. Several survivors said it looked as if he’d gone to a specific spot, as if it had been choreographed. There was no mention anywhere that anyone had heard a cell phone ring this time. But that didn’t mean one hadn’t rung. It was the kind of detail that could easily be overlooked. One survivor said that Abbas yelled out the words “I am ready,” and the device went off. End of story.

  Justin wondered w
hy Abbas had picked the specific spot he’d chosen in the restaurant to unleash the explosive. He remembered Billings telling him about the kill ratio—the range in which a bomb is certain to destroy whatever is in its path. If that were the rationale, then Abbas would have chosen the center of the restaurant, wouldn’t he? That’s where the damage would be sure to be greatest. It didn’t make sense.

  Hell, Justin thought. Nothing made sense. Not anymore.

  He turned to the Times front page, began to read through their coverage. At the jump, on page eighteen, there was a box that listed, in alphabetical order, the victims of the La Cucina explosion. His eyes quickly ran down the list. It was habit. Cops always looked for the dead.

  About a third of the way through he stopped scanning and froze, staring at one name. For a moment he thought he was rattled and disoriented because he’d just discovered the death of a friend. But although he recognized the name, he quickly realized that this man who’d been killed in the La Cucina explosion was no friend.

  Martin Heffernan.

  That was the name on the victim list.

  The FAA agent. The guy who’d boarded the downed plane in East End Harbor, stolen the pilot’s identification and wiped his fingerprints clean. The man who told Ray Lockhardt the result of the FAA investigation—before any investigating had begun.