by Lisa Lutz
Much later in the evening, somewhere in the vicinity of eleven P.M., there was another knock at the door. This person kept knocking; then she started yelling. It was my mother. Through the door, she claimed she would call the cops if I didn’t open up. So, I opened up.
Mom pushed her way inside, looked me up and down, and then said, “You smell like a distillery.”
“It was only a matter of time.”
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Drinking yourself into a stupor.”
“Now that we’ve got that cleared up, you can be on your way.”
“Pour me a drink,” my mother said.
After my nap, I couldn’t remember where I last left the bottle, so I roamed my hardly roamable apartment, scanning for the booze. My mother found it first and served herself.
“I talked to Ruth Schilling,” my mom said. “I’m sorry, Izzy.”
I stopped roaming once the bottle was located and sat back down on the couch. Mom parked herself right next to me. The sympathy stuck in her voice, but there was something else there as well. I was drunk so I couldn’t put my finger on it. It could have been disappointment or fear or guardedness. She wasn’t sure who she was dealing with at that moment—old Isabel, new Isabel, or another mutation.
“I know this is hard, Isabel. If you need anything, I’m here for you. But try to hold yourself together, honey. Morty needs a friend now. You can shut down later.”
“Don’t worry; I’ll manage,” I said unconvincingly.
“Do you want me to stay?” my mom asked.
“Nah.”
“I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” Mom said.
My mother left and sometime later I fell back asleep on the couch. I woke up at nine fifteen A.M. to my phone ringing.
“You’re late,” my dad said.
I looked at the clock.
“Not that late,” I replied. Although I would be quite late once I made it in.
“You’ll feel better if you come to work, Isabel.”
“I’ll feel better if I sleep another three hours,” I replied.
“Honey, get in here right now.”
“Should I take a shower first?”
Believe it or not, my dad yelled to my mom, “She’s asking if she should shower.”
My mom shouted a really loud “yes” in reply.
One hour, a shower, three aspirins, four slices of toast, and two cups of coffee later, I entered the offices of Spellman Investigations.
“You look like hell,” Mom said.
“What were you expecting?” I asked.
My mother approached the whiteboard and drafted yet another rule.
Rule #68—Arrive at work looking well-groomed
I promptly vetoed the rule and assumed I could convince Rae to second it. It would soon be a moot rule. I charged my cell phone, which had died in the middle of the night, and soon it began chirping, alerting me to messages. I put the phone on mute.
“You have some calls to return?” my mother asked.
“Nope,” I replied, trying to focus my attention on the credit report of Sheryl Magnuson, Zylor Corp. employee applicant. As I added the relevant and nonderogatory data into her main file, my head began throbbing again.
“Is there any coffee in the kitchen?” I asked.
“Yes,” my mother flatly replied.
I poured the coffee and returned to the office, where I spotted my mother checking my cell phone and whispering to my dad. I snatched the phone from Mom’s hands.
“This office isn’t big enough for the three of us,” I said.
“Why don’t you go to the basement and shred some old files?” Mom replied.
“Why don’t I go home?”
“Why don’t I not pay you this week?” Mom said.
“Why don’t I go to the basement and shred some files?” I replied.
“Take your phone with you.”
I walked down the rickety stairs of the dimly lit basement. Above our industrial-sized paper shredder is a sign that reads SUGGESTION BOX. Inside the box are all the files that are ready to shred. Once I stuck the first stack of pages through the shredder, I realized my head could not tolerate the grating din of the machine. There’s a cot in the basement, which gives it a prison-cell quality but also makes it a good place to nap. You can’t hear the shredder very well from the office, so I opted for a nap instead. It’s nice to get paid to sleep.
I woke an hour later somewhat refreshed. At least it didn’t feel like miners were trying to tunnel their way out of my skull. I shredded a few more files but decided I’d had enough. I walked up the steps to the office door and noticed that the doorknob was missing. The door, however, was latched.
I knocked on the office door.
“Hey! I’m locked in here,” I said.
There was no answer. I shouted again. Still no answer.
Since I had my cell phone on me, I phoned my mother. Thankfully, she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Who?”
“So, so not funny right now.”
“What do you need, Isabel?”
“I need you to get me out of the fucking basement. That’s what I need. It had a doorknob when I came down here.”
“We’re at a lunch meeting right now.”
“Where? In the kitchen? Walk ten paces forward and twenty to your left and let me out!”
“We’ll be back in the office as soon as we can,” Mom said, and hung up the phone.
Then I phoned Dad. His call went straight to voice mail, per my mother’s instructions, I’m sure.
I called David after that.
“Can you come to the house and let me out of the basement?”
“Sorry, Izzy. Mom already phoned me and told me I couldn’t let you out.”
“What’s the point of all this?” I asked. “I could have those two arrested and then they’d have to spend fifteen hours a week digging trenches at an organic garden.”
“Isabel,” David replied. “Just call him. Okay?”
I spent the next forty-five minutes trying to figure out a way to open the door without a knob, but apparently it’s a finely tuned symbiotic relationship.
So I made the call.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Henry. It’s Isabel.”
“Where have you been? I was worried.”
The hangover, the second false imprisonment, and the fact that I thought Henry should know exactly what he was dealing with forced an honest answer out of me.
“Morty told me he was dying and so I got tanked and didn’t answer my door when you dropped by. My mother has locked me in the basement of the office. Can you please come to the house and both free me and arrest them?”
“Olivia locked you in the basement?”
“Yeah. And you know what? It’s not like you get used to this sort of thing.”
“I’ll be right there. Is anyone home?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re eating lunch in the kitchen.”
Twenty minutes later, I was freed.
“Oh my goodness, Isabel,” my mom said, playing innocent. “I don’t know how that happened.”
My dad stared at his shoes, unable to pull off any performance. Henry glared at my mother.
“Olivia, that’s not how you handle things.”
“Are you sure, Henry?” Mom replied. “Because it seems to have worked out exactly as I planned.”
I didn’t say anything, but she was dead right.
“Isabel, do you want me to take you home, or do you want to stay at work?” Henry asked.
“What do you think?”
“We’re leaving,” Henry said.
“Start the car,” Mom replied. “Isabel will be right out.”
My father walked Henry to the door while Mom cornered me in the office.
“Sweetie, it is now time to be a grown up. You’ve had thirty-two years—more time t
han most people. I don’t expect you to wear sweater sets and have manners, but I do need you to not sabotage everything good in your life. I know you’re tough. But sometimes you can ask people for help.”
“Okay, Mom. You’ve made your point. But can you now scale back a bit on your interventions?”
Mom nodded her head in agreement. “I promise you, as of today, I’m done meddling.”
My mother lied. She wasn’t done meddling, not by a long shot. However, her future meddling took on a far less criminal air. And on that day her words did not fall on deaf ears.
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
It wasn’t my choice to make, but the way I saw it, there were two options in the Merriweather/Harkey situation. With Maggie’s help and Fishman’s testimony, we could launch an all-out investigation on Harkey. What fruits would come of this inquiry were uncertain. If it panned out, it could uncover more cases in which police misconduct might have led to improper convictions. In theory, we could free more than one innocent man or woman. However, the court system does not make this process easy—it fights against it at every turn—and Harkey seemed to have covered his tracks well, or well enough. If we launched the investigation, there was also a good chance that nothing good would come of it. Perhaps there would be a shadow over Harkey’s reputation, but that shadow was already there and didn’t seem to affect him.
There was another option, as Lieutenant Fishman explained to me. An option that had equally doubtful rewards but held more promise. We could convince Harkey that we were about to begin an investigation on all of his cases that went to conviction and try to barter with him.
•� •� •
A few days later, at Henry’s house, I paced the night away trying to make the decision. I also hunted for snack food, which was hard to come by in Henry’s house.
“You need more snacks.”
“Look on the third shelf,” Henry replied. “I got you some cheese puffs.”
My heart warmed briefly until I saw the label on the bag.
“No, you bought me Karma Puffs.”1
“Same difference.”
I broke open the bag of Karma Puffs and continued pacing while snacking.
“I’m going to have to vacuum tomorrow,” Henry said.
I ignored him. He could worry all he wanted about Karma Puff dust; I had more pressing matters to contemplate.
“What do I do, Henry?”
“You could eat those over the kitchen sink.”
“No, about Merriweather.”
“You do what you can live with,” Henry replied.
And that was the right answer.
An hour later, Rae showed up. She was tired of the unit and wanted to watch TV. Henry asked her to leave; she refused. I asked her to leave; she rolled her eyes. Since I was staying the night at Henry’s place, I was in no mood to drive her home. Briefly both Henry and I were at a loss as to how to get rid of her. We phoned Fred, but he was at some family dinner and didn’t pick up.
Henry sat down on the couch next to Rae and politely asked her one last time to leave. She refused.
“That gives me no choice,” I said as I approached Henry, straddled him on the couch, and planted a long, passionate kiss on his lips.
Within seconds Rae, struck with terror, screamed, almost vomited, and was out the door.
And that, my friends, is how we solved the Rae extraction situation once and for all.
Over the next week, Maggie and I assembled our case against Harkey. We created a list of every questionable arrest and interrogation procedure and a spreadsheet of every witness Harkey had ever interviewed in consideration of the possibility that he had swayed their testimony. Everything that looked shady we pulled together into one nice, clean, threatening file.
Maggie made an appointment with Harkey on a Tuesday afternoon. She strolled into his office lugging the file and dropped it on his desk. She explained that she had enough evidence against him to bring to the DA to request a full investigation into Harkey’s practices on the police force. However, she explained, her loyalty was to her client. All she really wanted was the evidence box on the Demetrius Merriweather case. Casually, Maggie mentioned that should that physical evidence suddenly be returned to its proper place, this file would go back into the file room and never see the light of day again.
However, if the physical evidence didn’t turn up, she would have no choice but to approach the matter from a broader perspective. She left him a thick folder containing copies of the key elements in her case against Harkey to bring the threat home. She told Harkey to think about it. She told him that his thinking should take no more than a week.
One week later, the physical evidence in the Merriweather case miraculously reappeared in the evidence room. A day later, my car window was bashed in. Coincidence?
DOING TIME
While Schmidt was being freed from San Quentin, Rae was unfortunately stuck in probation at the community garden. Maggie took pictures and sent them to Rae’s cell phone. Unlike so many others who have had the misfortune of being falsely imprisoned, Levi Schmidt had a family that could welcome him home and give him time to breathe and learn to live in the outside world again. Schmidt would have a chance for a relatively normal life, at least what was left of it. That day at the garden, Rae planted carrots and zucchini and didn’t mind so much that she was spending most of her free time on her hands and knees in the dirt. That was the last day she wore her FREE SCHMIDT! T-shirt. More than a few times I’ve wondered what happened to the hundreds of navy-blue tops—I guess they turned into sleepwear, cleaning rags, and landfill.
I visited Demetrius as soon as we got the news on the evidence and told him to be patient. DNA testing takes time. Requesting the courts to test for DNA on a closed case takes even more time. But I reminded Merriweather that it was a step in the right direction. Then I had Merriweather take another quiz. He scored 100 percent again, so I figured, like I’ve always said, you can learn almost anything from television. Since we had some time to kill and I knew these visits helped kill the monotony, Merriweather and I played Mad Libs. (Our game options were limited because of the plastic divider.) Still, I think he enjoyed himself. Then it was time for us to say our good-byes.
“Angel, when I get out of here, I’m going to buy you a four-dollar cup of coffee,” Merriweather said.
“I look forward to it,” I replied.
Since I was crossing the bridge and not far from the Winslow residence, I decided to drop in and see how Mr. Winslow and his new valet were doing. I’m afraid I have nothing of interest to report. They were doing fine. Although Winslow did ask about Mr. Leonard and I could tell from the wistful tone of his voice that while the new valet had all the skills, manners, and attentiveness required for the position, Winslow clearly missed the dramatic presence and true friendship of Mr. Leonard.
I then checked on Mrs. Enright and inquired how her son was doing. She played no games this time. She shook my hand but avoided eye contact in the way that people avoid eye contact when they can’t stand to be seen. I left quickly, knowing that I was making her uncomfortable. I had seen too much of her life and she didn’t like it. I suppose it was the contrast of having just visited Demetrius, but it seemed fascinating to me that a man in prison could find more joy in life than a woman who was free to roam the streets. Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn’t quite as spectacular.
THE ATTACK OF
SUNDAY-NIGHT DINNER
The attendance at family meals began to expand exponentially after Fred started showing up, though I got the feeling he always ate a slice of pizza before coming. I got that feeling because I noticed tomato sauce stains on his shirt and he made a big show of only eating the vegetables for my mom. This night, Henry made his first appearance.
My mother was always extra nice to Henry, as if she had to compensate for whatever trouble I inflicted in our private life. I think Henry enjoyed the deference. Truth be told, there was definitely some inflicting be
ing done.
Also making an appearance that night were Morty and Ruth. When Morty saw Henry, he pulled me aside and said, “Finally, you gave the cop your number.”
“Yes, Morty. He definitely has my number.”
Morty pinched my nose. “Good girl,” he said. “Don’t blow it with your crazy shenanigans.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I tried not to notice how little my old friend ate these days and averted my gaze from the way his clothes hung loose off his bones. The glasses made him Morty. If he removed those, I don’t think I could have borne to look at him.
Fortunately the evening’s primary distraction was David and Maggie’s announcement that they would be getting married in two months’ time. I am happy to report that not a single person used the phrase “shotgun wedding.” My mother insisted that Rae and I throw a combination baby/bridal shower. Rae and I exchanged a glance that mixed both terror and incomprehension, having only been to such things on rare and cruel occasions. However, my sister and I reverted to our poker faces and offered helpful suggestions.
“I can make Magic Punch,” I said.
“How do you feel about pizza rolls?” Rae asked.
My mom interrupted us and said, “Don’t worry, Maggie. We’ll make sure it’s tasteful.”
I heard David mutter, “Because tasteful is Isabel’s middle name.” Then I heard him say, “Ouch,” which meant that Maggie had kicked him under the table.
After the minor assault, Maggie turned to me and said, “If I see anything pink or powder blue, or there’s a pacifier or a baby bottle in sight, I will take you down right then and there. Do you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” I replied.
Maggie was going to make an excellent sister-in-law.
THE LONG GOOD-BYE
